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Future Direction of Energy Research 5 March 2009
Many scientists, policy makers, and citizens agree that the US needs to take a new direction in energy research in order to maintain national security and combat climate change. As such, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources held a committee hearing on 5 March in order to discuss the Future Direction of Energy Research. Among several qualified witnesses was, most notably, Steven Chu, the Secretary of the Department of Energy.
In his testimony, Secretary Chu noted the amount of increased funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which was passed last month into law. The Act not only allocates money to weatherize the homes of low-income families ($5 billion) and to “green” federal buildings ($4.5 billion), but it also includes a combination of funding and tax incentives to the private sector to encourage clean energy and job creation.
In addition, Secretary Chu affirmed that the US needs to increase energy research funding while refocusing those funding dollars. Furthermore, he proposed his ideas for improving energy research, development and deployment:
- Developing science and engineering talent: training students in energy-related fields
- Focusing on transformational research: high risk and high reward research; “DOE must strive to be the modern version of the old Bell Labs in energy research”
- Broader, more effective collaboration: integrate and partner with national labs, universities, and industry research
- Speeding demonstration and deployment: help deploy established clean energy technologies and develop next-generation technologies
Other witnesses acknowledged the economic and environmental cost of continuing to import oil. However, when discussing clean, renewable energy sources that have been proven time and again in the lab, but have not been deployed, it was noted that “the current versions of these technologies do not perform well enough to compete with conventional fossil energy technologies.” Mainly, developing and deploying these energy resources is difficult when their costs are significantly higher than traditional carbon-based energy sources. Witnesses also mentioned DOE's Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC) and that while these create “dream teams” of the best scientists working with the best tools, the DOE must also “recruit the next-generation of talented early career scientists and inspire them to become tomorrow's energy innovators.”
Several witnesses expressed a desire to see the advancement of fourth-generation nuclear, carbon capture and sequestration, and smart-grid technologies implemented. Other ideas included increasing the natural gas supply and nearly all witnesses agreed to Deborah Wince-Smith, President of the Council on Competitiveness, when she stated “access to affordable energy is a basic need for economic growth.”
The majority of witnesses noted that some sort of partnership between the private sector and the government, namely DOE, will be required to solve this problem. While it has been proven that, as Robert Fri of Resources for the Future said, “government programs with clearly focused goals can yield substantial benefits” in energy research, these programs need to be stepped up.