Chu's Green Energy Agenda

As head of Obama's Energy Dept., physicist Steven Chu intends to draw on smart ideas from America's green innovators and entrepreneurs

By John Carey

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President Barack Obama's new Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, is an unprecedented choice. Previous energy secretaries have all been politicians, such as former Democratic Representative, and now Governor, Bill Richardson of New Mexico, or former Republican Senator Spencer Abraham of Michigan. Chu, in contrast, is an eminent scientist, winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize for breakthroughs in basic physics. He's widely considered to be the smartest person ever to head up the Energy Dept.

Chu wasn't giving interviews prior to his Senate confirmation, on Jan. 20. But his mission is already clear to people who are familiar with his work or know him personally. He has said that the U.S. needs to increase funding dramatically for basic research, especially in energy. That's the only way to feed the fires of innovation. Chu believes the amount of money allocated for research in the Energy Dept.'s $25 billion budget is "quite pathetic," says colleague Chris Somerville, director of the Energy Biosciences Institute at the Energy Dept.'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which Chu directed until tapped for Obama's Cabinet. Nevertheless, Chu is "quite an optimist," says Somerville. "He believes that if we could marshal the resources, there's untapped genius that could be brought to bear on problems."

Chu is equally passionate about the need to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases that are altering the climate. In the service of that cause, he even put his own reputation on the line while running Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. He altered the focus of the organization, starting a big initiative three years ago, dubbed Helios, in solar power. Then he took an even more brazen step that raised questions about the role of corporate funding in government laboratories: He did a deal with oil giant BP (BP), which is putting up $500 million to fund the Energy Biosciences Institute.

The Early Years

For much of his early life, Chu didn't consider himself to be controversial, or even all that clever compared with others in his family. His Chinese immigrant father was a professor of chemical engineering; his mother was an economist. "Virtually all of our aunts and uncles had PhDs in science or engineering, and it was taken for granted that the next generation of Chus were to follow the family tradition," he later wrote.

While growing up on New York's Long Island, Chu built homemade rockets, taught himself to pole vault, and discovered a passion for reading and proving theorems in math. But compared with his brothers and cousins, who went to Princeton and Harvard, "I was…the academic black sheep," he observed. With grades he described as "lackluster"—he had an A- average—he settled for the University of Rochester.

But his brilliance shone through. Or as Chu put it, he had some luck and seized on the opportunities. "Instead of working with a clear vision of the future, I followed my nose, head close to the ground where the scent is strongest," he wrote. He got his doctorate at the University of California at Berkeley, then landed at Bell Laboratories. At AT&T's (T) fabled research paradise, "we felt like the 'Chosen Ones,' with no obligation to do anything except the research we loved best," he later recalled.

Institutional Optimism

Chu's years at Bell Labs (1978 to 1987) are crucial to understanding his view of the world—and what he might do as Energy Secretary. The sprawling research lab was a special place.