Yeah, Nix-on-Dick started it and Bush II elevated it to cabinet level! Oy! If we could just get some Pubbies in office we wouldn't have to deal with all this crap. Oh, wait...
Nixon started ERDA which was the AEC (nuclear weapons) with additional energy research at the laboratories that the AEC had built. With the oil crisis, Jimmy Carter expanded its powers into the DOE by adding the federal energy regulatory commission and a number of applied energy programs, including the biggest of all, shale oil, which program went the way of the dodo.