Skip to main content

Obama's Cabinet Picks: Energy Secretary

By
Obama's Cabinet Energy SecretaryThe Hillary to State speculation drew most of the attention this weekend, but there was some Energy news. The AP is reporting that New Jersey Environmental Protection Commissioner Lisa Jackson has been named to the Obama-Biden transition team on Energy.
Jackson joins Robert Sussman, a former deputy Environmental Protection Agency administrator, and 11 others. They will conduct a department review to provide Obama and key advisers with information they need to make policy, budgetary and personnel decisions prior to the inauguration.
Per the Obama transition site, Jackson has been named a Team Lead for the EPA Review. Other Team Leads include Cecilia V. Estolano, CEO of the Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles, and Robert Sussman, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Some did play the cabinet parlor game this weekend: in the pages of Newsweek, Slate.com's Jacob Weisberg lobbies for Al Gore to become Energy Secretary.
The genius principle should also be applied to the lesser agencies, where many of the names being trotted out have a dreary, box-checking quality to them. Obama says transitioning to renewable fuel sources is his second-highest priority after saving the economy. So why not talk the brilliant, socially awkward Al Gore into taking the job of energy secretary? Following the anonymous Samuel W. Bodman might seem like a demotion for the former vice president and Nobel Prize winner, but it would give Gore a chance to accomplish his life's mission by addressing climate change—and make up for his neglect of the issue when he was vice president.
Overseas, Kostis Geropoulos from New Europe, asks, "Why not make him [Arnold Schwarzenegger] Secretary of Energy?"

Click here for more NNN coverage on who will be in the Obama Cabinet.

Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
If Al Gore is "brilliant", how does one characterize the 60% of the US population that is brighter than Gore?
November 17, 2008 at 8:54 AM
Space Fission said…
More speculation and raw random data on who will be the next Secretary of Energy here . . .

http://djysrv.blogspot.com/2008/11/energy-secretary-guessing-game.html
November 17, 2008 at 11:47 AM
Anonymous said…
Al Gore is a tremendous BOOB. Just look at his "house" and then compare it, to say, GW Bush! Bush in Crawford has an ideal Green home. Gore? an energy sucking collosal mansion! Putting Gore in as Sec. of Energy is like putting Charles Manson on as Sec. of Interior! Bad move.
December 3, 2008 at 12:42 PM
Anonymous said…
Recommendation to Barack Obama:

The best choice for the Secretary of Energy is an odd one. You want someone who is committed to environmental protection, sustainability, and energy reduction. You need someone who knows how to interact easily with the political world and the business world. You need someone who understands energy use of business, transporation, and residential. And you need someone who knows how to lead a large / diverse organization. The best pick would honestly be Lee Scott, recently retired CEO of Wal-Mart. Look at his record on sustainability, ask yourself who knows how to work with businesses to get them to take action, ask yourself who has relations with guys like T. Boone and Al Gore, and finally ask yourself who was able to work well with local, state, and national governments on natural disasters from forest fires to hurricanes.

I am not sure the Obama administration will have the ability / courage to choose him due to the fear from the unions and negative view of Wal-Mart. But, then ask yourself who has the most energy efficient new stores (Wal-Mart), ask yourself who has the most energy efficient trucking fleet (Wal-Mart) and who has a large fleet of leased Hybrid's (Wal-Mart).

If you truly want the US to be in a better place on energy in four years, pick the person able to truly drive the results. Pick Lee.
December 9, 2008 at 6:08 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

By
Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...
23 comments
Read more

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

By
Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...
7 comments
Read more

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

By
You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...
6 comments
Read more