Obama's Energy-Environment Team: Wow, Nobel Laureate Physicist as Energy Sec

I guess Barack Obama listened when Al Gore came calling yesterday to discuss energy and environmental issues. According to NBC, Obama will name Steven Chu as his choice for Energy secretary, Lisa P. Jackson for EPA administrator and Carol Browner as energy "czar" reporting to the president.

It's a very strong team, but Nobel Laureate physicist Steven Chu is an especially fascinating choice to head Energy. The Energy Secretary is most often a bureaucrat, so the choice of a physicist is ground-breaking, signaling that a strong emphasis will be placed on developing new energy sources.

Chu's academic and research career is impressive indeed and he has a compelling biography. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997 for his work on laser cooling. He currently directs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where pioneering projects are coming online that are focused on molecular and solar energy studies that might yield technologies to address global warming:

As global warming warnings grow more dire, Chu is currently pushing his scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and industry to develop technologies to reverse climate change. Chief in Chu's campaign is an unprecedented research pact reached between UC Berkeley, oil industry giant BP, the Lawrence Berkeley Lab and the University of Illinois.

Nearly $400 million in new lab space will expand energy-related molecular work centered at Lawrence Berkeley that involves a cast of partners around the world; a $160 million Energy Biosciences Institute (scheduled to open in 2010) and funded by BP will include Chu's separate solar energy program.

Lisa P. Jackson, Obama's pick for EPA administrator, is a member of Governor of New Jersey Jon S. Corzine's cabinet. She currently serves as his Chief of Staff and she is the former Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. She's the first African American and first African American woman to serve as Chief of Staff to the Governor of New Jersey. As the state’s chief environmental enforcer, Jackson led groundbreaking compliance sweeps in Camden and Paterson, communities in which the effects of pollution on public health had long been neglected.

Jackson previously served for 16 years with the US Environmental Protection Agency where she worked in the federal Superfund site remediation program, developing key hazardous waste cleanup regulations, overseeing hazardous waste cleanup projects throughout central New Jersey and directing multimillion-dollar cleanup operations.

Carol Browner, Obama's pick for the new post of energy "czar," has long been a prominent figure on the environmental scene, and served for eight years as President Bill Clinton's EPA Administrator. Early in her career she worked for Citizen Action as its associate director and served as general counsel to the Florida House Committee on Government Operations. Between 1986 and 1991, she served as a key aide to Senator Lawton Chiles and then-Senator Al Gore. Browner headed the Florida Department of Environmental Protection from 1991 to 1993.

Browner currently works at the Albright Group, a "global strategy group" headed by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. As a Principal, Browner assists businesses and other organizations with the challenges of operating internationally, including the challenges of complying with environmental regulations. She's also currently the chair of the Audubon Society.

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