Energy Secretary Designate, Steven Chu confirmatioAssociated Press
Committment to Independence, Clean Energy & Coal As Critical Part Of Energy Supply
WASHINGTON - Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu promised Tuesday that if confirmed as energy secretary he will aggressively pursue policies aimed at addressing climate change and achieving greater energy independence by developing clean energy sources.
But he also told lawmakers that
he views nuclear power and coal as critical parts of the nation's energy mix and said he was optimistic that ways can be found to make coal a cleaner energy source by capturing its carbon dioxide emissions.
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Chu's passion about developing new types of nonfossil energy and his concerns about climate change have been well documented.
But when pressed by senators,
Chu acknowledged that coal cannot be abandoned as a primary source of energy, although he
promised that research into capturing carbon emissions — pollution linked to climate change —
would be pursued aggressively.
"Some people think perhaps we can turn off coal," said Chu. "Even if we do it, China and India will not."
Chu shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 1997 for finding a way to cool and trap atoms by using laser light. He is a former chairman of the physics department at Stanford University, and before that was head of the electronics research laboratory at Bell Labs.
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Most components of Clean Coal Technology already exist including CCS (carbon capture and storage) which will be the focus of further development for large-scale deployment in an environmentally sound manner. The US definitely should pursue this agressively to help the environment and benefit itself economically and politically.
K