Federal gov't issues RFIs

In recent weeks, the term "Request for Information" has come under fire from members of the Council for being undefined and, I guess, incomprehensible. And since the term RFI has generated a bit of a firestorm in relation to the pool bubble, I thought you may like to know I've been forwarded an April 11, 2008 RFI that was issued by the Federal Government (EERE). The RFI is four pages long and starts out with this description:

"This RFI is issued to encourage specific input from a broad-based cross-section of stakeholders, such as energy project developers, equipment vendors, engineers, investors, bankers, inventors and the like. This RFI is targeted to stakeholders directly involved in the promotion and development of energy efficiency, renewable energy and transmission technologies that employ new or significantly improved energy efficiency, renewable energy and transmission technologies addressing the production, consumption or transportation of energy that also achieve substantial environmental benefits. Through this RFI, the Department of Energy (DOE) is requesting input from these stakeholders in order to formulate and draft a solicitation for applications under a $10,000,000,000 loan guarantee authority that meets the goals established by Congress under Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005."

And based on the email I received... yes... it does appear as though the email was something of a "cold call," going out to dozens, perhaps hundreds, of energy services companies (ESCOs).

I hope that as the Council moves forward with its new Bubble Study (BS), whoever's in charge, kicks it off with an RFI. In fact, they could just edit the Fed's RFI, use the same email list and really expedite this whole process.

But then, I'm not sure if the Council truly wants to accomplish anything with this BS.

Tim White