Stimulus Energy Fund Tracker: Nearly a Year and Only 5.7% Spent

(MoneyWatch)  It's been nearly a year since the Department of Energy received $37 billion as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -- aka stimulus money -- and they have managed to spend $2.1 billion. That's it. Eleven bureaucratic months later and the DOE has doled out 5.7 percent of the funds authorized in the stimulus bill. Now, to be clear, the DOE is moving faster than it has in the past and it has awarded about $25.2 billion in funds, according to information on its Web site.

It's been awhile since BNET Energy checked in the DOE's stimulus spending. Back in August, I wrote about DOE's progress and at the time the government agency had awarded $9.5 billion and spent $451 million. But with DOE Secretary Steven Chu's testimony Thursday before the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy, I thought it was a perfect time to check in and write about the agency's stimulus spending.

Chu, who was asked about the figure during his testimony on the department's proposed fiscal 2011 budget, said he was frustrated with the slow down.

Sen. Bryon Dorgan, D-N.D., hinted at the lack of stimulus spending early on in the testimony when he asked Chu -- after noting the large amount of money given to the agency -- if he was having fun with it? Dorgan did note the DOE had been delayed in part by slow Senate confirmations.

When the stimulus bill was passed the DOE had essentially no senior staff or advisers, a point Chu noted.The DOE now has 11 key personnel who will help speed things up, Chu said. Among those senior advisers is Jonathan Silver, a former managing general partner at Washington D.C.-based venture capitalist firm Core Capital Partners, who was appointed in November to head the DOE's loan guarantee and green auto programs.

Later Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, honed in on the molasses-like distribution of the stimulus funds. Her biggest concern was with $32 billion unspent, how do you deal with the backlog funds, recognizing that it's likely the DOE will get a second infusion of cash as a jobs bill comes forward?

Chu expressed disappointment with the slow disbursement of funds and laid some of the blame on the states. "The states widely vary with how they're getting the money out," Chu told the committee. He said some states have spent upwards of 20 percent of the stimulus funds given to them by the DOE, while others have spent zero.

The DOE is now sending employees to these state agencies to try and "help them get moving." Chu added that many states are not used to "dealing with this magnitude of money" or the federal rules. "It's certainly less than we hoped initially, but we're moving along," Chu said.

It's easy to have the knee jerk "sounds like an excuse" reaction. The slowdown does highlight a real problem in the doling out of federal funds of any kind: bureaucracy kills.

A far broader question is once the money actually reaches the local and state governments and companies it's meant for, will it create jobs? Congress will surely hammer on that particular point next week when the Senate is expected to begin voting on its version of a jobs bill.

Here's a quick breakdown on what and where DOE stimulus money has been spent: (there is an additional $4 billion under the loan guarantee program not listed below)

• Energy efficiency and renewable energy: 4.1 percent spent of the $16.7 billion in authorized funds;
• Environmental management: 19.8 percent of $6 billion in authorized funds;
• Electricity delivery and energy reliability: 0.4 percent of $4.5 billion in authorized funds;
• Fossil energy: 0.2 percent of $3.4 billion in authorized funds;
• Science: 11.8 percent of $1.6 billion in authorized funds;
• Advanced research projects agency: 0.4 percent of $389 million in authorized funds;
• Departmental administration: 25.2 percent of $42 million;
• Western Area Power Administration: 22.8 percent of $10 million in authorized funds;
• Energy Information Administration: 0 percent of $8 million in authorized funds.