Obama names energy and environment team
President-elect Barack Obama on Monday formally announced the top members of his energy and environment team and pledged to move aggressively on energy security and climate change.
As expected, Obama nominated Nobel Prize-winning scientist Steven Chu, now the head of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as secretary of energy at a press conference in Chicago.
Lisa P. Jackson, the head of New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection, is Obama's choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Nancy Sutley, the deputy mayor for energy and environment for Los Angeles, was picked as chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Chu is said to have been nominated as the next energy secretary.
(Credit: Stanford University)And Obama named former EPA administrator Carol M. Browner to a new position--assistant to the president for energy and climate change--to coordinate energy and climate policies among different federal and state agencies.
The secretary of the interior, who will be the final member of the administration's energy and environment team, will be named later this week, Obama said.
Obama said the nominations reflect his goal to invest in energy technologies to both revitalize the economy and address climate change.
"One of the key points that I want to make at this press conference and I will repeat again and again during the course of my presidency is there is not a contradiction between economic growth and sound environmental practices," Obama said.
"I think that the future of innovation and technology is going to be what drives our economy into the future. And the energy economy is going to be part of what creates the millions of jobs we need," he said.
Obama added that his choice of Chu reflects his desire to have science as the basis of environmental and energy policy decisions. "We will make decisions based on facts, and we understand that the facts demand bold action," he said.
Chu said he intends to support research on sustainable energy technologies at the Department of Energy.
"We believe aggressive support of energy science, coupled with (commercial) incentives...can transform the entire landscape of energy supply," he said.
Challenges and reactions
In the week running up to Monday's announcement, Obama's reported choices were generally well received by clean technology business people and advocates.
However, Obama's energy and environmental team faces growing challenges in implementing broad changes.
The global economic crisis and falling oil prices have slowed green-tech activity, particularly for companies that require lots of capital to commercialize new technologies.
The European Union reached an agreement on carbon-emissions trading on Friday after intense lobbying from utilities and heavy-manufacturing industries. The greenhouse gas reduction targets remain in place, but heavy polluters have more leeway in how they meet those targets, according to reports.
As this Associated Press article points out, scientists say that the task of curbing greenhouse gas levels is more challenging today than it would have been several years ago.
On the political side, some observers doubt that investments in energy efficiency and clean technologies can create the millions of jobs Obama intends to create.
Finally, some have noted that Chu, although a renowned scientist, could run into difficulties navigating the politics of Washington.
Energy guru and efficiency advocate Amory Lovins, the founder and chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, urged Chu to separate nuclear weapons responsibilities from the DOE and to create an assistant secretary devoted to energy efficiency.
"Be bold," Lovins said in a statement. "This is our last and best chance to get energy right. We know how; we just need to go do it."
Martin LaMonica is a senior writer for CNET's Green Tech blog. He started at CNET News in 2002, covering IT and Web development. Before that, he was executive editor at IT publication InfoWorld. E-mail Martin. 
In Order to Mitigate Global Warming, the World Governments are Pursuing & Using the "Wrong Technologies":
NUCLEAR POWER MAY NOT BE THE MOST CONDUCIVE TO SOLVE GLOBAL WARMING ISSUES BECAUSE IT MIGHT BE PRONE TO DISASTERS OWING TO UNFORESEEN ERRORS WHICH MIGHT REPEAT THE CHERNOBYL ACCIDENT, THE HARMFUL FALLOUT CONTAMINATION FROM WHICH MAY LAST MORE THAN A FEW CENTURIES.
In order to save our World called the Planet Earth from further Global Warming and resultant adverse climatic changes causing all the unprecedented incremental Natural Disasters globally, we must go after the Best Technologies already available long ago despite the suppression of which by selfish vested interests of Fossil Oils' Companies.
Nikola Tesla the Greatest Inventor of the last century had invented the Technologies to run cars & power stations without fuel one Century ago and these technologies might still be classified top secret, immediately after his death. It is time to resurrect Nikola Tesla's life-works to produce electrical power without fuel and sharing them as it was intended by the Greatest Inventor himself.
Stanley Meyer had invented the Technology to turn Water into unlimited amount of fuel for making Unlimited Power Supply and to run cars and all internal combustion engines with HHO "on demand basis only" and so no storage of the HHO gases is required as it is safer & cheaper to store water instead, but unfortunately he was murdered. He had about more than 40 patents in this Technology. No one Car/Technology Company has pursued this technology further by buying up his technology and put them to good use to save our this planet Earth from Global Warming causing adverse climatic changes and disasters and hardship owing to unlimited and unrestrained use of Fossil Oils and Fuels, thus releasing & emitting enormous quantities of green house gases into the atmosphere. I think some company like Google should buy this Patented Technologies from Stanley Meyer's family and make this open source technology for the world to improve on and make good use of this Technology to save our world call Planet Earth.
On a two prongs approach, also those Zero Fuel Technologies invented by Nikola Tesla should be declassified and resurrected by the next President of USA to run cars and power-stations to save our Planet Earth from destruction and doom owing to unlimited and unrestrained use of Fossil Oils and Fuels for the whole of last Century. Our World the planet earth must be saved from the exploits of greed of the vested self interests of the fossil oil & fuels producers that pumped the unlimited amount of Greenhouse gases into our common atmosphere for the last century.
http://www.hbci.com/~wenonah/new/tesla.htm
http://keelynet.com/energy/teslafe1.htm
http://www.panaceauniversity.org/
History had proven that owing to selfish gains and big business interests and the many Government interventions the "Free Energy Inventions & Innovations" for the good of mankind were suppressed by vested interests such as the life works of Nikola Tesla and the strategic others were even kept classified by the US Government after his death until the present day. 100 years has been lost and that now our planet earth is placed under the stress of Global Warming owing to the unlimited use of Fossil Oils and Fossil Fuels which in the first place was not needed if the Inventions of the Greatest Inventor, Nikola Tesla were not suppressed 100 years ago. If the Governments of the Nations of World are not going to make and initiate the required changes to stop the continuing use of fossil oils and fuels with alternative fuel someone without vested interests in the Fossil Fuel Industries has got to take the great Initiative to bring out the best technology to save our planet from impending doom.
The best inventions of the Greatest Inventor like Nikola Tesla were suppressed 100 years ago, but under present day scenarios, the works of Great Inventors like Stan Meyers were suppressed as he had been murdered and many others like him were also murdered. Instead of getting support in the scientific community he was ostracized and so as others like him.
The next President of USA must come forward to lead in creating the best alternative energy sources for the good of mankind to follow the footsteps of Nikola Tesla to share his inventions for the good of all mankind. Be it free energy by Coils tapping free energy from the Magnetics Poles of the Earth, Cold Fusion or Magnetic Engines or splitting of Water through electrolysis process on demand basis to produce Brown Gas or HHO to run the present day Vehicles' Internal Combustion Engines without modifications then why not to cut the pollutions from the use of fossil oils and fuels.
K A Cheah
Independent Observer
- by megreener January 8, 2009 9:23 PM PST
- Alternative energy technologies suffer from some common problems. First, several sources are intermittent and unreliable. These are natural resources so the wind does not always blow, the sun does not always shine and waves do not always occur. This gives rise to the inherent problem of providing a constant power supply to energy users.
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(11 Comments)Nationally, this may be resolved by using revolving supplies so that conventional fossil fuel power stations running at low output may promptly be increased to full output to meet sudden demands when alternative sources are not available. For instance, an eco friendly method could be to use pumped hydro-electric power in which water stored behind a dam would be released to meet peak demand and then pumped back later. Alternative energy sources are discussed in great detail at http://www.onebiosphere.com
A more efficient solution will be to establish a distributed system over an entire continent so that when one county is producing excess power, it sends electricity to another region. Similarly, when there is no wind in Massachusetts, wind energy from Texas may be distributed.