Dr. Ernest Moniz was sworn in as the new Energy Secretary this week. Last week, the previous Secretary, Dr. Steven Chu, gave an interview to Stanford where he is returning as a physics professor.

The Nobel laureate was asked “What’s the No. 1 problem on your list?” His answer:

Climate change. We’re heading into an era where if we don’t change what we’re doing, we’re going to be fundamentally in really deep trouble. We’re already in trouble. So we have to transition to better solutions.

We’re not too far away from producing a lot of renewable energy, and doing it cheaply. Solar power is going to become cheaper and cheaper – costs have plummeted three-fold in six years, partly because of the dropping price of modules and electronics. Wind energy is within 15 percent of the cost of new natural gas energy, and the DOE predicts that that cost will cross over within one or two decades, so we need to start to plan the transition system that can conduct more wind energy.

But right now, we’re not prepared. As technology continues to race forward – battery technology has advanced faster in the past five years than what I’ve seen in the [previous] 15 years – we need policy to guide and anticipate development. It takes decades to change things like infrastructure, and so people have to think about that today. Otherwise, progress slows down, and we emit more carbon and get into more trouble environmentally.

Back in 2009, Chu said “Wake up,” America, “we’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California.”

Chu did keep talking about climate change in the past 4 years, but neither the media nor the White House were paying much attention. And so we are “already in trouble” with much, much worse to come if we don’t act now.

Related Post:

• Chu Resigns, Writes Of Our ‘Moral Responsibility’ For Action Amid Growing Evidence We’re Making Weather More Extreme

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced his resignation today. He sent out a remarkable letter to Energy Department employees.

Given that he has not spoken out strongly on the climate crisis since the start of his term, his words on the subject are striking. Here are some excerpts:

• The average temperature of our planet is rising, with majority of the temperature increase occurring in the last thirty years. During the three decades from 1980 to 2011, the number of violent storms, floods, droughts, heat waves, wildfires, as tabulated by the reinsurance company Munich Re, has increased more than three-fold. They also estimate that the financial losses follow a trend line that has gone from $40 billion to $170 billion dollars per year. Most of those losses were not insured, and the country suffering the largest losses by far is the United States.  As the President said in his recent Inaugural Address, “some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.”
• The overwhelming scientific consensus is that human activity has had a significant and likely dominant role in climate change. There is also increasingly compelling evidence that the weather changes we have witnessed during this thirty year time period are due to climate change.
• Virtually all of the other OECD countries, and most developing countries including China, India, Mexico, and Brazil have accepted the judgment of climate scientists.
• … China now exceeds the U.S. in internal deployment of clean energy and in government investments to further develop the technologies.
• … the risks we run if we don’t change our course are enormous. Prudent risk management does not equate uncertainty with inaction….
• The cost of renewable energy is rapidly becoming competitive with other sources of energy, and the Department has played a significant role in accelerating the transition to affordable, accessible and sustainable energy.
• Ultimately we have a moral responsibility to the most innocent victims of adverse climate change. Those who will suffer the most are the people who are the most innocent: the world’s poorest citizens and those yet to be born. There is an ancient Native American saying: “We do not inherit the land from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.” A few short decades later, we don’t want our children to ask, “What were our parents thinking? Didn’t they care about us?”

Chu has been an excellent Secretary of Energy, overseeing a near doubling of U.S. renewable energy capacity and a huge jump in clean energy R&D. You can see a comprehensive list of what has been achieved during Chu’s term in his letter.

My main disappointment with his tenure is that after beginning with such refreshing bluntness on the threat posed  by unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions — see Steven Chu on climate change (2/09): “Wake up,” America, “we’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California”– he was effectively muzzled by the White House.

But that was doubtless not his choice. Team Obama obviously didn’t want him or science advisor John Holdren — or anybody else, for that matter — speaking out strongly on the gravest preventable threat to modern human civilization (see “Team Obama Launched The Inane Strategy Of Downplaying Climate Change Back In March 2009“).

Chu will be missed.

Related Posts:

• Video (11/10): Steven Chu on why China’s bid for clean energy leadership should be our “Sputnik Moment”
• Steven Chu On ‘The Avengers’: We Don’t Need Superheroes To Win The Global Clean Energy Battle

by Jocelyn Fong, reposted from Media Matters

The all-day grilling of Secretary of Energy Steven Chu over the Solyndra bankruptcy by the House energy oversight subcommittee was an eye-glazing embarrassment, reporters agreed. Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) tried to defend his belief that the United States can’t compete with China on clean technology by attacking Chu, even calling for his firing. “America faces a simple choice: compete or accept defeat,” Chu shot back at Stearns in the hearing. “I believe we can and must compete.”

Without any evidence of wrongdoing, the Republican-led hearing drove outside observers to tears. “Stop it with the Solyndra nonsense,” Scientific American energy editor David Biello pleaded on Twitter. “Just stop it.”

Fortune editor Dan Primack scathed the hearing as a colossal waste of time:

My eyes have glazed over. I’m hungry, dumber than I was this morning and very angry with myself.

Don’t be coy, you know what I’m copping to having done: I spent almost the entire workday watching yet another Congressional hearing on the Solyndra “scandal.”

This is at least the third such hearing, all in a flailing effort by GOP reps to prove that Solyndra wasn’t simply an honest loan gone bad, but rather an example of corruption and self-dealing in the Obama White House. For all the talk about this deal, there still has not yet been any actual evidence — including cherry-picked emails released by the Republican-led committee — that Solyndra received its $535 million government loan because of crony capitalism. And that remains the case, after five hours of testimony from U.S. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu.

The Solyndra witch hunt has been fueled especially by Politico, whose large team of energy reporters have fixated on the story. Two-thirds of Politico energy stories since Sept. 12 have been on Solyndra. Senior energy and environment reporter Darren Samuelsohn has dominated the coverage, with 90 percent of his prolific output dedicated to fluffing up the Solyndra “scandal.”

Energy Secretary Steven Chu is the sole witness at the House Energy and Commerce hearing on Solyndra (webcast at 10 am).  The DOE posted Chu’s testimony and this nice chart:

U.S. solar cell (PV) and module manufacturing market share.  Yes, the peak coincides with the ascension  of the Gingrich Congress and its efforts to stop clean energy deployment

Here are some key excerpts on the clean energy race:

Investments in clean energy reached a record $243 billion last year. Solar photovoltaic systems alone represent a global market worth more than $80 billion today. In the coming decades, the clean energy sector is expected to grow by hundreds of billions of dollars. We are in a fierce global race to capture this market.

In the past year and a half, the China Development Bank has offered more than $34 billion in credit lines to China’s solar companies. China is not alone: To strengthen their countries’ competitiveness, governments around the world are providing strong support to their clean energy industries. Germany and Canada operate government-backed clean energy lending programs, and more than 50 countries offer some type of public financing for clean energy projects….

When it comes to the clean energy race, America faces a simple choice: compete or accept defeat. I believe we can and must compete.

And on Solyndra:

As the Secretary of Energy, the final decisions on Solyndra were mine, and I made them with the best interest of the taxpayer in mind. I want to be clear: over the course of Solyndra’s loan guarantee, I did not make any decision based on political considerations.

My decision to guarantee a loan to Solyndra was based on the analysis of experienced professionals and on the strength of the information they had available to them at the time.

The Solyndra transaction went through more than two years of rigorous technical, financial and legal due diligence, spanning two Administrations, before a loan guarantee was issued….

Here is Chu’s whole testimony:

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Energy Secretary Steven Chu is going to be in the hot seat tomorrow when he testifies before a House committee investigating the Solyndra bankruptcy.

If Chu’s previous remarks to the press are any indication of what he’s going to say to Congress, he’ll be stressing the need for continued strategic federal investments in clean energy — after defending himself from accusations of political influence in the loan guarantee process.

In this week’s podcast, we’ve got a brief conversation with Secretary with Chu, who laments the political response to the science of climate change, and who reiterates his support for continued federal investments in renewables.

“Even in desperate times like the Civil War, the United States was spending money, giving subsidies to railroad companies to build the transcontinental railroad. That wasn’t free. The United States invested their resources in federal lands to generate land grant universities that would increase the productivity of U.S. agriculture and schools like the University of California Berkeley and MIT and Cornell. That wasn’t free. And so, when push comes to shove, yes we have to make tough decisions, but we never took our eye from the long view. We didn’t eat our seed corn, we didn’t sell our plow horse.”

Chu sets up our conversation with Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who describes why the military can be a force for accelerating the commercial deployment of cutting-edge renewables.

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Our Nobel-Prize-winning Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, gave a blunt speech to the Washington Post Live Smart Energy Conference today.

Of course the WashPost event is sponsored in part by Shell Oil.

And you can watch it here through about 2 pm (DC time).

Here are some highlights of Chu’s remarks:

Once again, there is a huge opportunity before us – a global clean energy market that is already worth an estimated $240 billion and is growing rapidly.  In fact, a very reasonable estimate is that solar photovoltaic systems alone represent a global market worth more than $80 billion this year.

China – like many countries – has learned from the U.S. how government can support critical emerging industries.  Last year, China offered roughly $30 billion in government financing to its solar companies, including $7 billion to Suntech.  At least 10 countries have adopted renewable electricity standards, and more than 50 countries offer some type of public financing for clean energy projects.  For example, Germany and Canada operate government-backed clean energy lending programs, and in the last several months, the UK, Australia, and India have announced plans to do the same.

America faces a choice today: Are we going to recognize the opportunity and compete in the clean energy race or will we wave the white flag and watch all of these jobs go to China, Korea, Germany and other countries?

The global competition is fierce, and support for innovative technologies comes with inherent risk. Not every company or every product will succeed, but that is no reason to sit on the sidelines and concede leadership in clean energy. Some in Washington are ready to throw in the towel and write off the clean energy industry.  They don’t think America can compete or they don’t think it’s worth trying. Others think that the best thing we can do is for the government to get out of the way and let the free market work.

To those in Washington who say we cannot or should not compete, I say: that’s not who we are.  In America, when we fall behind, we don’t give up. We dig in and come back. Why should we concede one of the biggest growing markets in the world that is in our sweet spot: technological and manufacturing innovation? America has the opportunity to lead the world in clean energy technologies and provide the foundation for our prosperity. We remain the most innovative country in the world … but “Invented in America” is not good enough. We need to ensure that these technologies are invented in America, made in America and sold around the world.  That’s how we’ll prosper in the 21st century.

Chu used a different metaphor than “white flag” last year — see Video: Chu on why China’s bid for clean energy leadership should be our “Sputnik Moment.” Either way, it’s great to see a scientist use metaphors, a cornerstone of persuasive messaging — see “The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor”: How to be as persuasive as Lincoln.

The speech only disappoints because Chu never once mentions global warming, which is clearly a major reason why other countries are putting so much money in renewables and why clean energy is ensured of staggering market growth in the coming decades.  Chu used to be blunt on this, too, back in early 2009 — see Chu on climate change: “Wake up,” America, “we’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California.”

I suspect the White House communications shop has, subtly or not, told Chu they (idiotically) believe climate change is not a winning political issue, which is the exact opposite of the truth — see Bombshell: Democrats Taking “Green” Positions on Climate Change “Won Much More Often” Than Those Remaining Silent.

Here are Chu’s full remarks (with links to sources):

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The U.S. energy secretary says the debate about climate change reminds him of the old argument that smoking isn’t bad for you.

Steven Chu also urged greater investment in clean energy as he spoke Tuesday in Paris to an International Energy Agency meeting of energy ministers and industry leaders.

He says that because the evidence of climate change is growing more compelling and the price is oil is likely to rise, countries must turn to clean-energy production.

Chu criticized attempts to “muddy the waters” on climate change science.

He said the debate in the U.S. reminds him of what he “heard as a young person growing up about how cigarette smoking was not really bad for your health.”

This isn’t the first time Chu has made this argument.  Last year he spelled it out in a little more detail that the AP does:

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On Saturday, our Nobel prize-winning Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, slammed those who want to gut clean energy programs:

Chu dismissed criticism from those who he said “are ready to wave the white flag and declare defeat.”

The United States faces a choice, he said, to sit on the sidelines or try to win the “clean energy race” with China, Germany and other countries.

He said the U.S. “can’t afford not to” invest in clean energy.

“It’s not enough for our country to invent clean energy technologies, we have to make them and use them, too,” Chu said. “Invented in America, made in America and sold around the world. That’s how we’ll create good jobs and lead in the 21st century.”

Chu was speaking at the Solar Decathlon where collegiate teams from around the world compete to build model solar homes.  He didn’t mention the over-hyped Solyndra story by name, but he defended the tremendous value the loan program brings to Americans:

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