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 given the limited funds available, including including the launch of the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy and several Energy Innovation Hubs (nicknamed Bell-lablets) based on the storied Bell Labs innovation model.
Unfortunately, when asked how to deal with the scarcity of engineers and scientists America faces in the coming years and how to direct the talents of those we have, Chu's response was a swing and a big miss. All he had to offer were two suggestions: learn to "read graphs and data... and digest [the reports] for yourselves" and put your computer on sleep mode.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Chu: Yes, We Need a Manhattan Project on Energy
Author: Breakthrough Institu
