Per my logic the DOE can't look completely incompetent because then they'd set themselves up to have everyone fired and the department eliminated, which is precisely what they want to avoid. By being far too competent in solving the nation's energy problems then they become redundant, and that gets everyone fired and the department eliminated.
Nope. As I mentioned above, there are far too many missions that DOE is involved with for that to happen. Consider the various standards that have to be codified as the country modernizes energy distribution to allow renewables to become a bigger part of the energy mix. Then there is nuclear waste disposal, nuclear regulatory, etc. None of these things will go away anytime soon and there is plenty of work to go around. Plus, the agency is only around as long as Congress allocates funding to it. Should the people ever feel that DOE should be de-funded, the mechanism is there.
They have to appear to so something and things like convincing people to buy energy efficient light bulbs would be one of those things. Because LED lighting is just plain awesome we don't need a government office to tell us to buy them. They practically sell themselves and the people that make these lights are certainly motivated to advertise them to consumers.
Incorrect, DOE and EnergyStar in particular intervened to avoid the same issues in LED-land that plagued CFLs. That's where CRI requirements for LED light bulbs came from, for example. The market didn't provide them on its own, industry didn't come together, it was DOE and the EPA that made it happen. From there on, LEDs became the darlings of utility rebate programs because they were the least expensive way to reduce energy consumption on a wide, predicable scale. However, utility consortia undertake these programs in part due to constraints (not enough transmission capacity to keep up with people growth) or because regulators pressured them to do so. The increased demand in turn increased scale, lowered prices which explains why stuff came to the market much quicker than in the absence of demand stimulated by utilities, tax rebates, and the like.
Energy efficiency programs don't need the DOE to "coordinate" them. Energy efficiency is something people seek naturally because it's a money saver.
That's another statement not supported by the facts. For example, consider split incentives where an apartment owner will buy the cheapest, lowest-efficiency appliances and the renter pays the operational costs. Similarly, Senators like Ted Cruz moved to make the enforcement of energy efficiency standards re: lightbulbs impossible by blocking any funding for enforcement. Hence, you can still buy inefficient 100W incandescents even if there are better incandescents out there that cost less to operate over their life than the old-fashioned tungsten wire kind.
OEMs in this country would also like to beg to differ re: your statement on coordination. It is precisely the coordination that ensures that not all efficiency rulemakings come into effect on the same day/year, creating an insurmountable financial tsunami of R&D, CAPEX, etc. for US industry. Even diversified OEMs like Whirlpool can make their investments over time to meet standards, continue non-efficiency-related R&D, etc. because standards phase in across many product categories over time. Coordination makes that possible, particularly in the context of developing test procedures, amending them as needed, before setting standards.
If this is a matter of reducing use of coal and oil then this can fall under departments like Interior, Defense, Homeland Security, Commerce, Transportation, Agriculture, and ultimately under the Office of the President. That's coal and oil use affects many things in our lives besides energy independence, and energy independence will likely be a priority of all the US Cabinet level departments I listed. Any coordination among them would necessarily have to fall under the Office of the President because the Secretary of Energy can't tell the Secretary of Defense what to do.
Various departments are tasked with specific missions. The department of transportation (DOT) coordinated the CAFE standards with the White House and the industry, for example. Where the mission is housed is not as important as everyone being a team player and coordinating efforts under the auspices of the White House.
Why do you need the windmill people to talk to the nuclear power people? Or the hydro people to talk to the solar people? Assuming that they do need to talk then this can happen in private industry, where this balance in implementation must be struck.
All nascent Energy-related technologies at one point or other likely sought and / or received funding from DOE, as research grants, programs, whatever. Ideally, those $$$ are allocated on the programs that have the highest return on the investment, which in turn suggests centralizing the allocation, coming up with fair metrics and then letting the market come up with proposals. That way, the best programs get funding priority. Your alternative would allow sub-par results to come through just because a particular agency gets funding that it has to spend by years end or lose it.
Similarly, there are problems that only the government can take on, such as the risks associated with nuclear power plants, standards on building them, and disposal of the spent fuel, just to name a few examples. Then there is the question of how to structure and potentially restructure energy markets, distribution systems, etc. to account for changes in technology and generation, such as renewables, demand response, resiliency, etc. Someone has to bring everyone in industry to a table and hammer out the new rules of the road. Industry almost never does this successfully on its own. Hence standardized rules for driving, etc.
Any coordination among federal agencies can happen in the Office of the President, the Office of the Vice President, or by some "energy czar" that is an adviser to the different departments on energy policy. The lack of a DOE to coordinate this research doesn't mean it will not be coordinated. The DOE appears to be so large now that there is no coordination on national energy policy.
You vastly overestimate the resources in the office of the president. The White House staff sits on the shoulders of giants. Agencies like DOE do their best to make things happen as the president and Congress direct & fund them to. Plus, remember that the President is supposed to execute the duties of his / her office while Congress does all the funding. Hence, re-allocation of funds via the President is not something the founding fathers intended, nor what Congress usually likes.
That's my whole point, the DOE is not getting you the fusion energy research that you want. At this rate we will never get viable nuclear fusion power because the DOE keeps killing fusion energy research projects.
For the n-th time, it's not DOE that kills these projects, its the folk who allocate the dollars. If it was a funding priority in Congress, the money would flow. This speaks more to the issue of how short-sighted our politicians have become (reducing funding for basic research for over a decade, among other issues) than the problems that DOE may have. All I can do is tell my representatives that I'd like them to pay more attention to fusion research and to spend more $$$ on it. Beyond that, I have to accept in a democracy that there will be decisions made that I disagree with.
