Obama to name Nobel physicist Steven Chu as Energy secretary

More names leaking out for the Cabinet of Barack Obama and his White House team.

Our conscientious colleague Jim Tankersley over at the Swamp has just reported that at a news conference Thursday in Chicago the president-elect will name Steven Chu, the 1997 Nobel Prize-winning physicist from Berkeley, as his secretary of Energy.

He'll also announce the selection of Lisa Jackson as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Jackson is New Jersey's former environmental commissioner.

Additionally, Tankersley says, Florida's Carol Browner, yet another familiar face from the Clinton administration, will join Obama's White House advisor's list.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Associated Press

Comments

[Stephen C.]

What an outrage. He should have picked an oil man or former lobbyist from a coal company. :)

Instead we get competence and sincerity.

[Janice Silverman]

It's good that Chu is a scientist. But his alternative energy research initiatives are funded by British Petroleum through a controversial $500 million dollar contract with UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley Labs, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The emphasis at the BP-created initiative is on biofuels, nanotechnology and synthetic biology - and tends to involve "solar energy" in the sense of using biomass to produce fuels. Not an inherently evil enterprise, of course, but hardly free of distortion by economic interests. So, not to rain on everyone's parade, but just to add a little perspective. Super-smart, super-qualified guy - but no Amory Lovins.