Steven Chu, President-elect Barack Obama’s pick to be U.S. energy secretary, said during his Senate confirmation hearing yesterday that the new administration will push for a cap-and-trade system. He also said he will move quickly to support new nuclear power plants and the development of carbon capture technologies, but insisted that energy efficiency is the "lowest hanging fruit" for addressing the nation’s growing energy needs, while simultaneously reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
He also softened his stance that gasoline price should be higher. When asked about an earlier statement in which he said the U.S. needed to find a way to raise gasoline prices to the levels currently found in Europe, Chu said he recognized that American’s don’t want to pay more. He said the answer is in efficiency, so that if fuel costs go up, bills do not.
The Nobel Prize-winning physicist Chu, who is well-known for his opposition to coal use, said that some new coal-fired power plants would need to be built, until cleaner power generation is more widely available. Chu’s bending on the issue highlights where science collides with both politics and economics.
In a stance that may still be at odds with Obama, he said he would help streamline nuclear loan guarantees to help the industry construct several new plants to produce low-emission energy, despite the fact the the nation has yet to figure out what to do with growing stockpiles of nuclear waste. Obama has been highly critical of the nation’s plans to build a waste depository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
“I’m supportive of the fact that the nuclear industry should have to be part of energy mix in this century,” Chu said. “And recycling [nuclear waste] in the long term can be part of the solution”–a comment that likely refers to generation IV nuclear reactors.
Chus said he will urge the Department of Energy to work on carbon capture technology that can be shared with the international community. However, he insisted that energy efficiency must be the first course of business.
Both Republican and Democrat members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee said they expect Chu will be confirmed next week.
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A growing contingency of business leaders, scientists and politicians are calling for a carbon tax instead of a cap-and-trade plan. James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, recently said a cap-and-trade system simply isn’t capable of forcing the deep emissions cuts needed to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
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I am concerned about the approach to providing renewable energy in the plan described on the web site, Change.gov. and during Mr. Chu’s Confirmation hearing
I saw and heard Carol Brower in the youtube video on the web site. She talked about wind farms and solar farms and the need to upgrade the electricity grid to deliver the energy to where people are located. This is great, but additional approaches need to be taken at the same time. During the confirmation hearing, Mr. Chu described the need to upgrade the electricity delivery grid.
There was no mention of increasing the production of energy on people’s roof tops. Solar systems installed in people’s homes have a number of positive advantages that centralized renewable power generation does not have.
Since the power is generated in the area that it is required, there is less strain on the electrical grid for delivery. This approach also creates jobs right away for installers in the immediate community, where the jobs are needed, not in a remote area with solar and wind farms.
Local generation of electricity can also be done in commercial locations that generate energy for the community, such as warehouse roof tops and on malls, etc..
This creates lots of energy being generated in many locations, which makes it less vulnerable to acts of nature or sabotage.
Additional incentives and financing need to made available for local installations of solar systems to promote this area of renewable energy generation.