Whatever your views on the U.S. budget deficit and how to fix it, I think we can all agree that the source of this deficit is not the miniscule share of federal spending allocated towards energy efficiency and renewable energy programs. How much money are we talking about? Click here for the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)'s budgets over the past 10 years. What you'll see is that, with the exception of one-time federal "stimulus" spending, EERE's budget has basically stayed in the $1-$2 billion per year range, less than one-thousandth total U.S. federal spending of more than $3 trillion per year. The point is, even if you eliminated every penny spent on energy efficiency and renewable energy research, development, etc., it would have essentially no impact whatsoever on the federal budget or budget deficit.