From the Wonk Room.
President-elect Barack Obama’s
reported selection of Dr. Steven
Chu
as Secretary of Energy is a bold stroke to set the nation on the path to
a clean energy economy. Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, is the
sixth director of the Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory, a Department
of Energy-funded basic science research institution managed by the
University of California. After moving to Berkeley Lab from Stanford
University in 2004, Chu “has emerged internationally to champion science
as society’s best defense against climate
catastrophe.”
As director, Chu has steered the direction of Berkeley Lab to addressing
the climate crisis, pushing for breakthrough research in energy
efficiency, solar energy, and biofuels technology.
At Berkeley Lab, Chu has won broad praise as an effective and
inspirational leader. “When he was first here, he started giving talks
about energy and production of
energy,” Bob
Jacobsen, a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab, told the San
Francisco Chronicle in 2007. “He didn’t just present a problem. He told
us what we could do. It was an energizing thing to see. He’s not a
manager, he’s a
leader.”
In an interview with the Wonk Room, David
Roland-Holst,
an economist at the Center for Energy, Resources and Economic
Sustainability at UC Berkeley, described Chu as a “very distinguished
researcher” and “an extremely effective manager of cutting edge
technology initiatives.” Roland-Holst praised Chu’s work at Lawrence
Berkeley, saying “he has succeeded in reconfiguring it for a new
generation of sustainable technology R&D, combining world class
mainstream science with the latest initiatives in renewable energy and
climate adaptation.”
Under Chu’s leadership, Berkeley Lab and other research institutions
have founded the Energy Biosciences
Institute with $500
million, ten-year
grant
from energy giant BP, and the Joint BioEnergy
Institute with a $125 million grant from the
Department of Energy. The BP deal has raised questions and protests
about private corporations benefiting from public
research.
At the dedication of JBEI last Wednesday, Chu
“recalled how the nation’s top scientists had rallied in the past to
meet critical national
needs,
citing the development of radar and the atomic bomb during World War
II”:
The reality of past threats was apparent to everyone whereas the
threat of global climate change is not so immediately apparent.
Nonetheless, this threat has just got to be solved. We can’t fail.
The fact that we have so many brilliant people working on the problem
gives me great hope.
Chu’s leadership extends beyond this nation’s boundaries. As one of the
30 members of the Copenhagen Climate
Council,
Chu is part of an effort to spur the international community to have the
“urgency to establish a global treaty by
2012
which is fit for the purpose of limiting global warming to 2ºC,” whose
elements “must be agreed” at the Copenhagen summit in December, 2009.
Last year, Dr. Chu co-chaired a report on “the scientific consensus
framework for directing global energy development” for the United
Nations’ InterAcademy Council. Lighting the Way describes how
developing nations can “‘leapfrog’ past the wasteful energy
trajectory
followed by today’s industrialized nations” by emphasizing energy
efficiency and renewable energy.
It’s hard to decide if the selection of Dr. Chu is more remarkable for
who he is – a Nobel laureate physicist and experienced public-sector
administrator – or for who is not. Unlike previous secretaries of
energy, he is neither a politician, oil man, military officer, lawyer,
nor utility executive. His corporate ties are not to major industrial
polluters but to advanced technology corporations like AT&T (where he
began his Nobel-winning
research) and
Silicon Valley innovator Nvidia (where he sits on the board of
directors).
Chu is a man for the moment, and will be a singular addition to Obama’s
Cabinet.