White House/flickr
President Barack Obama talks with Dr. John Holdren, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Energy Secretary Steven Chu in the Oval Office, May 7, 2012.
Long-time viewers of The Rachel Maddow Show may recall the "Geek Week" segments aired in May 2010, which included an interview with Energy Secretary Steven Chu. (The segment also noted why At Least I Am A Nerd.com still redirects to the show's video player.)
Nearly three years later, we've learned that Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, will leave his post in President Obama's second term, stepping down from the Department of Energy later this month. With this in mind, it's worth pausing to appreciate the significance of Chu's first-term efforts, which haven't generated front-page news, but which carry extraordinary significance.
Time's Michael Grunwald flagged this gem from Steve LeVine, which argued that Chu took important steps to put the United States "on course for a new economic revival, led by energy technology."
The idea has been to provide fixed sums of concentrated, multi-year funding for scientists to solve really big problems. They have been housed within two Chu creations. The first is Energy Frontier Research Centers, which have been granted $2 million to $5 million a year to find novel ways to revolutionize solar power, nano-scale materials engineering, advanced batteries, solid-state lighting, superconductivity, and more. [...]
Chu's second creation has been more ambitious: the creation of a series of "innovation hubs." With $125 million in funding spread over five years, each of the five hubs has been tasked with unraveling big, seemingly intractable problems: how to emulate photosynthesis; make nuclear power safe; make buildings superlatively efficient; create a battery more or less equivalent in energy performance with fossil fuels; and invent a host of inventive new materials to replace ones in short supply in the US, such as rare-earth elements.
As NPR added, these efforts also included the launch of ARPA-E -- basically an internal R&D incubator project at the Department of Energy -- which in turn "funded a number of cutting-edge technologies."
Has this approach led to immediate breakthroughs that produced blockbuster headlines in Obama's first term? No, but that misses the point.
LeVine's report concluded:
It is early. Putting in place these petri dishes for big breakthroughs created the profile of a very different Department of Energy and a very different government. Bell Labs, along with rivals Xerox-PARC and RCA Labs, are gone, and by and large American companies no longer fund the type of research that in those days produced big and basic technological leaps. This absence is thought by some to be one reason for America's economic lethargy. If the US eventually gets its mojo back, Steven Chu's brainchildren may be partly responsible.
Brad Plumer added that ARPA-E is funding "novel ideas like laser drilling for geothermal energy, advanced lithium-ion batteries, and techniques to manufacture cheaper solar cells."
Could one of these technologies eventually transform the energy industry and become a big part of Chu's legacy? Perhaps. But it could take years to find out.
"Just as today's boom in shale gas production was made possible by Department of Energy research from 1978 to 1991, some of the most significant work may not be known for decades," Chu wrote in his farewell letter. "What matters is that our country will reap the benefits of what we have started."
Just in the abstract, Obama's decision to bring on Chu -- a physics professor, Nobel laureate, formerly of Bell Labs, former head of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory -- for a cabinet post was a milestone. After all, so much of our politics is dominated by anti-intellectualism and a fierce hostility towards science and reason.
But while Chu's role in the president's cabinet had symbolic value, it also created a foundation for generations of progress on energy policy. Whether Americans are accustomed to hearing about the secretary on a regular basis or not, Chu will be missed.
Leave a Comment:
Yeah, but pedigrees and bona fides are worth nothing over there in FOXTrailorTrash&Friends!
Despite the above, remember Solyndera remains under scrutiny by the likes of Steve Doocey and his nosehound instincts! Chu will be afforded no quarter from America's "news" organization located on the far far Right of your radio dial - you know all the way to the right to the 11 setting! -Kevo
Who has Obama chosen to take Chu's place?
And now the question we should be asking is "is this the start of a trend or just a blip?"
Since we have just re-elected President Obama, and things look very promising for 2016 (hopefully Hillary) I think it is just the start. Had Romney been elected, not only would he not have continued the work, but the oil lobby he would have appointed to write new policy and one of his buddies to head the dept, it would have been a blip.
Why, when countries like China are innovating, the US is retreating, is beyond me. Maybe the days of our retreat from R&D are over. Everything Chu did was necessary at this point, and I'm glad this article was here for people like me to have discovered his work while at DOE.
I read all of Chu's accomplishments, and they are grand, however, I see one thing missing. All of his accomplishments seem to center around innovation - i.e, making better batteries, making better solar cells, etc.. I see nothing listed about him supporting basic science. Is that because he didn't?
I also noted that the writer of the article Steve quoted doesn't have a clue if he thinks developing better solar cells and developing nanotechnology is "basic science".
Frankly I don't even understand what you mean by that. Perhaps he is leaving 'basic science' to the Dept of Education to save our public schools, and to public colleges to educate students, who can then be prepared to move on to .... what, advanced science? (To me, science is science, and it is up to the individual and their capabilities how far they advance down that infinite line.)
Sigh....
"Basic science" is the study of our world that is done without regard to what will come out of it. For example, there would have been no space travel without the "basic science" performed by astonomers who studied the heavens without ever thinking that there might be "money" made from it.
There would have been no nuclear bomb or nuclear power plants without the "basic science" performed by Rutherford, Curie, and Bohr and others. They didn't do this science thinking that they were going to "get" something from it other than a deeper understanding of our universe.
How big would your computer be if it hadn't been for people like Shockley? Would a cell phone even exist?
There would have been no advances in medicine if people like Galen and others didn't study the anatomy of the human, not for any "gain", but just to to "understand".
There can be no innovation without the basic science being performed first. Someone studies something just to understand it, and then others come along and realize that they can use that "basic" science to develop something new.
Basic science is that science that the Super Conducting Super Collier could have shown us had we not been so short-sighted.
We used to do "basic science" in this country, but now we farm it out to China and Europe - which means that the next technological advances will come from there, not here anymore!!!
That is a good point about basic science. The major way in which basic research is funded in areas that do not coincidentally overlap with obvious applications is through the National Science Foundation, a separate agency from the Energy Department, and through private grants and academic budgets.
After all, some basic research is a requirement for earning Masters and Doctorates in the physical science (this is the source of the ridicule that ignorant politicians pile upon obscure research subjects such as "mating habits of the (fill in the blank)"; the object is not only to study that subject, but to complete the training of the scientists who will study that and other subjects over the course of a career).
Incidentally, William Shockley was the publicity hound who hogged credit that belonged to his co-workers, Bardeen and Brattain, as well as a racist who could not refrain from putting his racist views into his Nobel acceptance speech. At least the committee awarded the prize to all three, but Shockley's name is the only one most people remember. And the transistor was on the borderline between basic and applied research.
Chu is a workhorse - He puts his head down and solves problems.
Good thing he has kept such a low profile...The GOP would have killed this if they had the option, or filibustered DOE funding until Chu was canned. The Luddite Party is still ginning up opposition to basic science - No way they'd agree to this.
There can be a downside to focusing so much on innovation.
Here is the only comedy sketch (script) featuring Stephen Chu. And it has Betty White!
http://tinyurl.com/axaz3dd
thank you for your service, Dr. Chu. You have always seemed in the speeches I've read or seen to be a fierce believer in this country and wanted what's best for it.
The only thing that will make alternate energy profitable enough to get corporate bosses (who control the Faux news message) to fund it is to tax fossil fuels heavily; and this would, in the short term, harm the economy, and harm the working class, especially those who drive their pickup trucks cross-country from small towns and farms to commute to the few jobs, which are in slightly larger towns or metropolitan suburbs. These are the ones who listen to Faux news, and they are hurting now, but renewable energy would not help them without financing to replace their older and less efficient vehicles (biodiesel, for example, requires a diesel vehicle). Since these voters would not benefit for many years from a tax that harms their finances as soon as it would be enacted, the Luddite message of the Tea Party resonates with them.
I have a proposal for an ERG tax which would be paired with a commuting tax credit, refundable at the paycheck withholding level, to discourage frivolous fossil fuel use while assisting middle class workers in the early years of the program to offset the tax for commuting, medical, student and charity travel (replacing the current mileage deductions for the latter three).
The tax would make fossil fuel about twice as high at the pump as renewable fuel, but reimburse workers for commuting to work assuming "average" cost per mile by offsetting withholding tax (along with final tax, of course) and even exceeding it. As "average" fossil fuel usage goes down over the years, the rebate would diminish. These workers would thus have an incentive, and the lead time, to replace their vehicles or arrange car pools or use public transit where available. Part of the revenue would go to the kinds of research being discussed, part to help startup businesses, AND ANOTHER PART to help those "stuck in a truck" workers who depend on the rebate in the beginning to finance the transition to renewable transportation, by analogy with federal student loans.
The information to calculate a worker's rebate is already available: employers know each employee's home address, the work site address, and the number of shifts worked in a pay period, and mapping software already available can thus compute the total commuting mileage for each paycheck (employees ordered to make a business trip by air from home would be paid as if the airport were their work site for the day of departure and day of return; business car rental ERG tax rebates go to the company like any other business expense).
Any discussion on this radical idea? Send it to the White House maybe?
BTW, the acronym ERG, which spells the basic unit of energy, stands for Energy Renewability Goals.
BP fiddled around with making a steel collection dome (fail), golf ball injections (fail), lying about the rate of oil flow (fail), spread dispersant (fail) and trying to siphon the leak into containers (fail) until Chu came in, got the real data and forced BP to give up the BS and cut & cap the disaster.
The administration's emphasis on subsidies and incentives for wind power created enough new electrical power equal to 12 Hoover dams. But Solyndra will be the first (and only?) talking point for the bumper sticker headlines of the nightly news, aggregator websites and of course small-government types and big oil/gas/coal lobbyists.
Can I just say that that sofa needs to be replaced (too/as well)?
I'm ashamed to say I thought the same thing when I first glanced at the photo.
My eye went immediately to the portrait of Lincoln in the background.
Lincoln's time is, probably, when the sofa was last reupholstered.
While it's true that Xerox PARC and Bell Labs are no longer what they were, it's worth noting that Microsoft Research has taken their place as a corporate sponsored pure research center and would recommend going to their website at http://research.microsoft.com to learn more about the massive amount of new ideas and new technology produced at this global string of research labs.
Chu did do some good things. However, he had a chance to develop a comprehensive phased approach energy policy and did not do it. I hate to bring up Solyndra again but another poster above did so. Owens Corning determined the technology chosen by Solyndra was way to expensive to produce and manufacture as they had tried it, but Dr. Chu backed Solyndra anyway which wasted millions if not billions.
Hum let's do the math, by simple recollection we find $60,000,000,000 ($60 Billion) for entitlements, subsidies and write offs for the Energy/Oil Industry each year. Then for Energy research we see $125,000,000 ($0.125 Billion) over five years or ($0.025 Billion/Year). That’s an unimpressive 0.042% ratio, or expressed as one dollar, $1 to $2,400 with the benefits going to the Energy/Oil Industry in perpetuity.
This sum does not come close to covering the salaries of the Energy/Oil Industry lobbyist or for that matter the air fare to transport them to Washington DC, where they in neatly suited dress write the legislation for Congress.
Congress surely has the proverbial LOG in its eye, while the Laureate is using LOGarithms to view the future. We can see the future through a tiny light, a three photon at a time from a candle lit on Mars. (if you supply the oxygen)
We are spending 6 million dollars a year to research 10+ biggest problems facing our immediate future?
The 46 Energy Frontier Research Centers effort is basically a way to reverse Bush-era cuts to National Lab overhead budgets. The map of their locations,
http://science.energy.gov/bes/efrc/
is kind of funny, since the energy producing states (except Texas) got almost none of the money. The DOE should focus on cleaning up the nuclear sites, and leave the basic research (superconductivity and rare earths) to NSF and DOD. ARPA-E is not needed. It smacks of the hundreds of millions of dollars that President Carter wasted on photovoltaic cells. He tried to push a rope, by funding technology that wasn't ready. Just like A123.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2012/12/12/china-wins-u-s-loses-in-a123-bankruptcy/