For a good portion of U.S. history energy was plentiful, unworthy of serious consideration. Whale oil gave way to kerosene, which was supplanted by coal found in prodigious amounts in the mountains of the country. The petroleum age dawned by the middle of the 20th century changed the calculus somewhat, but oil was still plentiful, even if it had to be imported. Only when the Oil Crisis precipitated by the OPEC embargo hit did the U.S. decide to establish a comprehensive energy policy.

On this day, August 4, in 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed into law The Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977, a cabinet-level post that would take over the duties previously handled by the disparate Federal Energy Administration, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Federal Power Commission.

The roots of the DOE lay in nuclear power. The Manhattan Project that developed atomic power and its weaponization was changed into the Atomic Energy Commission to control its non-military uses — which did not yet exist. By the time civilian uses of nuclear power became feasible, the AEC’s contradictory role became to control nuclear power without hampering its development. Given such an impossible task might explain why the agency was abolished altogether and replaced with the Energy Research and Development Commission (the forerunner to the DEA) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, responsible for control of civilian use of nuclear material.