Multiply by -1. Add a round number of billions-per-year, 200 perhaps, to get a positive sum, perhaps US$40 billion a year.

Fund the DOE in proportion to this number. You will see a motivated bureaucracy. They'll roam the countryside searching for leaky old houses, buttonholing the owners, offering to get some contractors in there that very afternoon, offering hotel accommodation for the duration of the work if it will cement the deal.

The proportionality might sensibly be something like 10 percent. So if, next year, (US$200B minus net annual fossil fuel tax revenues) has increased to US$44 billion, funding will increase from US$4 billion to US$4.4 billion.

--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
Oxygen expands around B fire, car goes