CHU TOUTS PERSONNEL CHOICES AS PROUD ACCOMPLISHMENT IN ADDRESS

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
3/1/13

Outgoing Secretary of Energy Steven Chu listed his personnel choices as one of his proudest accomplishments as head of the Department of Energy in what is expected to be his last public speech in his current role. In a Feb. 27 keynote address at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) energy innovation summit near Washington, Chu said that selecting talented personnel was one of his proudest accomplishments looking back at his four years at DOE. “In hindsight, it’s not the [headline] issues that you talk about, it’s actually hiring the right people,” Chu said. “After you get the right people, you give them the resources, but mostly you block and tackle for them, to use a football analogy, so they can run with the ball.” He listed allowing protégé and former ARPA-E Director Arun Majumdar to conduct outreach efforts with lawmakers—against the initial wishes of DOE’s Congressional outreach staff, he said—as one of the best moves he has made in that respect. “He turned out to be one of the best ambassadors for the Department of Energy in our history,” Chu said.

Chu’s address blended elements of nostalgia and humor as he gave a pep talk of sorts to an audience of hundreds of clean energy researchers and entrepreneurs, many of whom could see less federal grants for projects as budgets tighten under across-the-board spending cuts that go into effect today. He underscored previous remarks about the moral obligation to act on climate change, touted innovations made at the country’s system of national laboratories and even joked about a recent article in the satirical newspaper the Onion about his fling with a solar panel.

Chu announced his retirement Feb. 1 after four years at the helm of DOE, and said late last week that he will be returning to Stanford University to teach. He is expected to stay on at DOE until a successor is confirmed. Obama is widely expected to nominate nuclear physicist and director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Energy Initiative Ernest Moniz to be his replacement in the coming days or weeks. When asked about whether he would accept the position of Secretary of Energy if he could do it again, Chu quipped, “the answer is absolutely yes.”