Both graphs are from Pacific Northwest National Lab analyst James Dooley’s excellent report, “US Federal Investments in Energy R&D.” It’s these ridiculously low levels of research spending that make me wary of writing off any particular technology. Say carbon capture and sequestration or enhanced geothermal or wave power. The truth is that we haven’t put in the resources to know which technologies are a good idea.

Perhaps, given the top graph, we need a new measure of investment. Perhaps stealth bombers? They cost $831 million a piece in 2005 dollars ($530 million back in 1989).

If you’re doing the math at home — which I wasn’t doing very well, as Jason pointed out below — the cumulative budget for the DOE’s energy R&D program from 1961-2008 was about 215 stealth bombers. The annual energy R&D budget rarely exceeded $3 billion (in 2005 dollars), or not even enough change to build four bombers.