President-elect Barack Obama has selected Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist committed to slowing global warming and adopting alternative energy technologies, as the next secretary of the Energy Department. Chu is one of four officials whom Obama plans to name to top environmental positions next week, and they share a strong commitment to combatting climate change and weaning the country off fossil fuels. Chu, a 1997 Nobel laureate in physics, has been director of the government’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, which he has vowed to make “the world leader in alternative and renewable energy research.” The U.S. Energy Department deals
mainly with nuclear issues, but Chu — who has called global warming a “crisis situation” — is expected to lead the department in developing alternative energy sources. Obama also is expected to name former EPA administrator Carol M. Browner to head a new White House post overseeing energy and climate policy and to name the former head of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, Lisa P. Jackson, as the new chief of the Environmental Protection Agency. Nancy Sutley, a deputy Los Angeles mayor, will chair the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Berkeley National Lab
Steven Chu