The federal government should be investing "tens of billions of dollars" annually to drive a Manhattan Project-style pace of innovation necessary to address the scale of the energy challenge facing the U.S., said Energy Secretary Steven Chu yesterday.
Speaking to a packed auditorium at Stanford University, Chu expanded:
"If you look at the amount of funding for that [the Manhattan Project], and the amount of funding to put a man on the moon, it was a huge spike in funding. I think we do need that. The recovery act actually was the start of that...you still need I think tens of billions of dollars as a minimum per year invested in these technologies and the associated science. The DOE, our base budget for energy research is on a scale of $3 billion...the primary energy industry budget is about $1 trillion, if it's a high tech industry 10-20% is the usable amount of sale that you invest so that's $200 billion, so what we're investing in federal dollar is less than 1% of that or on a scale of 1% of what should be invested."
The Secretary highlighted the steps the Department of Energy was taking to encourage innovation, including including the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy and several Energy Innovation Hubs (nicknamed Bell-lablets) based on the storied Bell Labs innovation model.
Chu, however, came up short when it came time to suggest what the audience of America's best and brightest could do to help confront climate challenges. His advice: "become better informed and then teach others," and put your computer on sleep mode.
What a waste of a prime opportunity to inspire a room full of future leaders. Especially at a time when other countries are beginning to surpass the U.S. in numbers of engineers graduated each year.
At a panel later in the day, DOE Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Dr. Henry Kelly said, "There's little doubt we're in a race for our lives to maintain our productivity and competitive edge to keep high tech manufacturing here in the U.S."
Kelly said what the U.S. continues to have going for it is an ability to draw students from around the world. "Continuing to attract them and holding them is one of the critical parts of innovation policy," he said.
"Scientists have come to the service of our country in times of national need," Chu said. If Congress funds energy innovation at the level Chu argues is necessary, the next generation of innovators will rise to meet the nation's challenges again.
You can view the Secretary Chu's speech in its entirety here.
You can view the "Educating the Energy Generation" panel here.
