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U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu's Daring New Ideas For Climate Change

United States Secretary of Energy Steven Chu has garnered worldwide attention for his unorthodox ideas concerning climate science and clean energy. Most famously, not long after being confirmed by the Senate in 2009, Chu made a statement that research indicates that because of albedo, the climate-changing effects of carbon emissions could be phenomenally reduced by whitewashing all dark, flat rooftops. This simple, quirky, almost offhand suggestion was successful in mobilizing a substantial number of people to actually experiment with "cool roofs".

Such unconventional ideas are typical of Chu, shocking Americans into new lines of thinking about environmental science and clean energy. His vision and his unusual approaches to the advancement of green technology have raised many eyebrows throughout his two-year tenure, but neither advocate or adversary can deny that he has changed the way business is done in the Department of Energy. His colleagues in the DOE have seen him time and again cut through arcane bureaucratic red tape to execute plans in months which would otherwise have taken more than a year. Chu is leading the charge toward new energy-with a new energy.

A former professor of physics at Stanford University, Chu won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997 for demonstrating a method to freeze atoms using fine lasers. He is the first Nobel laureate to become a member of a United States presidential cabinet.

His fast-paced, idea-focused approach to energy policy has garnered awe and outrage both, but Chu seems unfazed by the flotsam and jetsam of public opinion. In his calm and measured voice, he remains resolutely outspoken about environmental issues and expresses the facts frankly (and often bluntly), never pulling his punches. At the 2008 National Clean Energy Summit, Chu warned that if the global average temperature were to rise by only a few degrees, worldwide coastal regions will be catastrophically flooded, creating perhaps more than one billion refugees worldwide-who will never be able to return home.

With the 2009 passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, more than $1.6 billion was granted to clean energy research. Chu has taken charge of this new funding to tap the ingenuity of scores of researchers, breathing new life into scientific research projects that could possibly lead to transformative technologies. The most high-risk of these projects are funded by a new agency called the ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy), created in 2007 to provide research grants to projects with potentially groundbreaking impact but which carry a large probability of failure. (The U.S. Department of Energy will hold the second annual ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit on February 28 - March 2, 2011).

Under Chu's leadership, the Department of Energy is more energized now than it has been in years (or perhaps ever), stirring up a good deal of publicity and press attention. Secretary Chu is steering the department sharply toward abrupt and extensive progress, spearheading a new U.S. commitment to energy research on a scale not seen since the energy crisis of the 1970's.

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