Steven Chu

When Thomas Steyer — a San Francisco billionaire and major Democratic donor — discusses climate change , he feels as if one of two things is true: What he's saying is blindingly obvious, or insane. "I feel like the guy in the movie who goes into the diner and says, ‘There are zombies in the woods and they're eating our children,' " Steyer said during a recent breakfast at the Georgetown Four Seasons, his first appointment in a day that included meetings with a senator, a White House...

When Thomas Steyer — a San Francisco billionaire and major Democratic donor — discusses climate change , he feels as if one of two things is true: What he's saying is blindingly obvious, or insane. "I feel like the guy in the movie who goes into the diner and says, ‘There are zombies in the woods and they're eating our children,' " Steyer said during a recent breakfast at the Georgetown Four Seasons, his first appointment in a day that included meetings with a senator, a White House...

No deputy secretary of energy has been announced, but the nominee could well come from among the suits pictured here as they attended Secretary-designate Steven Chu 's confirmation hearing yesterday. On the far left is Trudy Vincent , who is helping with the confirmation process. To Chu's right, working our way left, are Dan Utech , who handled environmental issues for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.); Jason Grumet , a campaign energy adviser; Dan W. Reicher ; former assistant energy secretary and now at Google; and ...

Energy Secretary Steven Chu resigned Friday after a four-year tenure during which he handed out tens of billions of dollars of grants and loans to foster renewable energy technologies — and ended up fostering controversy over whether the money was well spent. The Nobel Prize-winning physicist, who was brought to Washington by President Obama because of Chu's deep concern about climate change, found himself embroiled in controversy over a half-billion-dollar loan to solar-panel-maker Solyndra, which went bankrupt.

-- President Obama remains in Moscow, where he will deliver the commencement address for the 16th class of the private New Economic School. At the graduate school, Obama will outline his vision for U.S.-Russia relations. He will also meet during the day with Russian political and business leaders, beginning with a breakfast at Prime Minister Vladimir Putin 's dacha. -- Vice President Biden reveals the key findings of the administration's working group on food safety in an afternoon meeting at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

Steven Chu, President-elect Barack Obama's nominee for Energy secretary, presented strong views yesterday on the need to combat climate change while delicately handling questions from senators about his past criticism of coal use, endorsement of gasoline taxes and embrace of a cap-and-trade system for limiting greenhouse gas emissions. "It is now clear that if we continue on our current path, we run the risk of dramatic, disruptive changes to our climate in the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren," he said in...

Steven Chu U.S. Energy secretary An excerpt from Washington Post Live's recent Smart Energy conference. There's a huge opportunity before us: a global clean-energy market that's already worth an estimated $240 billion a year and growing rapidly. In fact, a very reasonable estimate, perhaps even conservative, is that solar photovoltaic systems alone represent a global market today of more than $80 billion a year. Eighty billion dollars is a lot of money. It's about as much as we...

President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who heads the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, to be the next energy secretary, and he has picked veteran regulators from diverse backgrounds to fill three other key jobs on his environmental and climate-change team, Democratic sources said yesterday. Obama plans to name Carol M. Browner, Environmental Protection Agency administrator for eight years under President Bill Clinton, to fill a new White House post overseeing energy,...

It must be in the genes. Barack Obama 's half sister Maya Soetoro-Ng got the rock-star treatment -- packed room, cell-cams hoisted above heads -- at the Asia Society's inaugural reception at the St. Regis Saturday and held the spotlight well. Steady gaze, calm resonant voice, nice way with a quip ("Delighted to be in Washington, other than the cold: I'm a bird of the tropics"). And smooth : As the Hawaii-based teacher paid tribute to the Asia Society for helping her find grounding as an...

Steven Chu has likened his arrival in Washington as President Obama's energy secretary to being thrown into the deep end of the pool -- and he boasted this week that he hadn't yet drowned. The Nobel Prize-winning physicist and PhD moved from running a research lab in California to taking over a sprawling federal agency with a $70 billion annual budget and 114,000 employees. "I still have my head above water," he joked in a wide-ranging interview in his office. His expertise is in...

Steven Chu U.S. Energy secretary An excerpt from Washington Post Live's recent Smart Energy conference. There's a huge opportunity before us: a global clean-energy market that's already worth an estimated $240 billion a year and growing rapidly. In fact, a very reasonable estimate, perhaps even conservative, is that solar photovoltaic systems alone represent a global market today of more than $80 billion a year. Eighty billion dollars is a lot of money. It's about as much as we spend on beer...

Energy Secretary Steven Chu was preparing to speak at a black-tie gala this month, and the hundreds of people milling about there were busy gabbing. Seeking to quiet the din, Chu called out "Solyndra, Solyndra, Solyndra," and people stopped to listen. He didn't mention the company again. Ever since Solyndra, a California manufacturer of solar panels, went bankrupt Sept. 5 with $535 million of federal loan guarantees, Chu and his Energy Department have been the focus of some...

When Steven Chu took the reins of the Department of Energy in 2009, he was entering an agency that needed to completely reorient its outlook — and fast. Until Chu arrived, the department's primary focus had rarely been on energy. The bulk of its budget had long gone toward maintaining the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal. But the 2009 stimulus bill gave the agency $39 billion for grants and loans to kick-start new clean-energy technologies. Chu had to grapple with a massive...

On April 20, 2010, BP's mile-deep Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico blew out, exploding in an inferno that killed 11 men, sank the huge drilling rig Deepwater Horizon and led to America's worst oil spill. In this excerpt from his new book, " A Hole at the Bottom of the Sea: The Race to Kill the BP Oil Gusher " (Simon & Schuster), which will be published Tuesday, Washington Post staff writer Joel Achenbach describes the Obama administration's attempts to persuade a skeptical public that...

-- President Obama remains in Moscow, where he will deliver the commencement address for the 16th class of the private New Economic School. At the graduate school, Obama will outline his vision for U.S.-Russia relations. He will also meet during the day with Russian political and business leaders, beginning with a breakfast at Prime Minister Vladimir Putin 's dacha. -- Vice President Biden reveals the key findings of the administration's working group on food safety in an afternoon meeting at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

Not long after taking over as secretary of energy, Steven Chu called in the top officials working on a program that had been one of his department's top priorities: providing government loan guarantees for $80 billion in clean and renewable energy projects. Congress had authorized the program in 2005, made the first appropriation the year after, and by the time gas prices reached $4 a gallon last year, even the Bush administration was keen to move ahead. And yet by the time the new energy secretary called his team together...

Not long after taking over as secretary of energy, Steven Chu called in the top officials working on a program that had been one of his department's top priorities: providing government loan guarantees for $80 billion in clean and renewable energy projects. Congress had authorized the program in 2005, made the first appropriation the year after, and by the time gas prices reached $4 a gallon last year, even the Bush administration was keen to move ahead. And yet by the time the new energy secretary called his team together...

When Steven Chu took the reins of the Department of Energy in 2009, he was entering an agency that needed to completely reorient its outlook — and fast. Until Chu arrived, the department's primary focus had rarely been on energy. The bulk of its budget had long gone toward maintaining the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal. But the 2009 stimulus bill gave the agency $39 billion for grants and loans to kick-start new clean-energy technologies. Chu had to grapple with a...

Steven Chu has likened his arrival in Washington as President Obama's energy secretary to being thrown into the deep end of the pool -- and he boasted this week that he hadn't yet drowned. The Nobel Prize-winning physicist and PhD moved from running a research lab in California to taking over a sprawling federal agency with a $70 billion annual budget and 114,000 employees. "I still have my head above water," he joked in a wide-ranging interview in his office. His expertise is in developing alternative forms of energy,...

It must be in the genes. Barack Obama 's half sister Maya Soetoro-Ng got the rock-star treatment -- packed room, cell-cams hoisted above heads -- at the Asia Society's inaugural reception at the St. Regis Saturday and held the spotlight well. Steady gaze, calm resonant voice, nice way with a quip ("Delighted to be in Washington, other than the cold: I'm a bird of the tropics"). And smooth : As the Hawaii-based teacher paid tribute to the Asia Society for helping her find grounding as an "untethered" grad...