Matt Rogers of the Department of Energy discusses how $36.7 billion from the Recovery Act is helping to define the future of green power--and the agency itself

By Katherine Harmon   

FLASH OF FUNDING: The Recovery Act, signed into law last February, made available the largest investment in renewable energy development in history.

Can wind turbines help to get the U.S. economy spinning again? The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) is banking on the notion that they will at least help. With the $36.7 billion it received from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act last February, the agency is making historic investments in the energy industry.

Not all of the money is going into building better turbines, of course. The agency is also putting big green toward a host of other emission-lowering projects, including better batteries ($2 billion), geothermal technologies ($400 million) and carbon capture and storage ($3.4 billion).

Whereas the largest chunk of change ($16.8 billion) is going to renewable energy and energy conservation, one of the smallest cuts of the DoE stimulus payout ($1.6 billion) is going toward scientific research. In a congressional hearing on the DoE's 2011 budget earlier this month, Energy Secretary Steven Chu noted that science, however, was a crucial part of future development: "With every initiative the department undertakes, sound science must be at the core."

Regardless of where the contracts, grants and loan guarantees are heading, though, little of the economic juice has gotten out to jump-start the energy field—or job market. Like many federal agencies, the DoE has yet to spend more than a small fraction (about $2.1 billion, or 6 percent) of its total allocation. ...