Questions and answers with Ernest Moniz

Ernest Moniz became secretary of energy in May 2013. The MIT physicist was previously undersecretary of energy and associate director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Clinton administration. Moniz spoke to Physics Today on 11 February, during the annual conference and exhibition of the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy. Following is an edited transcript of the interview.

PT: You spoke at the ARPA–E conference about somehow getting the ARPA–E program more involved internationally. How might that work?

MONIZ: The ARPA–E program will run just the way it is. When we walked around today with [Indian industrialist and philanthropist] Ratan Tata, we saw so many interesting technologies, many with applications that would be ideal for distributed generation, and that could be deployed in rural villages. We’ve got to think this through, but the thought was there is potentially a huge market for these technologies there, and a lot of interest in India, including from the major industrial organizations, for helping address the question of a billion rural people. We’re approaching the five-year mark from when the first ARPA–E contracts were signed, so we are at the point where we’re seeing quite a few of the technologies getting into the marketplace. How do you scale them up? By matching them to market.

PT: You have talked about having the national labs act in more strategic and cohesive fashion. What do you mean by that, and can you provide a couple examples?

MONIZ: We are doing things in a variety of ways. Last year we had our first—and will soon have our second—ideas summit, which brings together the labs and DOE folks on brainstorming the areas that typically are crosscutting, and how one would structure those programs. [We want to] use them up front more strategically to think through the directions and program structure you want. DOE is a science and technology agency at its core. It’s an S&T powerhouse, and the labs play a special role as an S&T asset base. So the idea is why not use them in that role of strategic planning as a system.

There are six crosscuts in our FY 2016 budget request. Of particular relevance is a $356 million request for a substantially grown grid modernization initiative. A consortium of 10 laboratories has come together with integrated plans for playing a major role in the execution of the grid-of-the-future project. It involves the Office of Electricity, [the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)], and our policy office. The labs have a role in how that is put together. They have a lot of modeling capabilities, which helps in putting the plan together, and they have physical facilities like the Energy Systems Integration Facility at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

A second crosscut is a subsurface science and engineering initiative, an area where there are many applications for the department: hydrocarbon production, engineered geothermal energy, carbon sequestration, and deep boreholes for nuclear waste. There’s a whole set of areas that are involved in subsurface, and they were all kind of acting independently. The labs put together an interesting program plan around the theme of fracture permeability management and sensing that will be crosscutting in its benefits to each program.

Another crosscut that is more traditional is high-performance computing, specifically the exascale thrust in the FY 16 budget. That’s one where the weapons labs, Oak Ridge, and Argonne national labs have always been leaders.

Supercritical CO₂ thermodynamic cycles is another example [of a crosscut].

PT: The Congressional Advisory Panel on the Governance of the Nuclear Security Enterprise said the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) hasn’t worked out. Do you see any changes coming there?

MONIZ: First of all, as required by the [National Defense Authorization Act], we will be making a complete response by March 15 to their recommendations. But at the highest level, I certainly endorse the key recommendations of the report in a few senses. A lot of the service functions of the department probably [would be better] with more integration than is now the situation, both for resource efficiency and for better operation. The [commission] was obviously very strong on the idea that NNSA has the responsibility to implement its programs. The confusion I think they were getting at may have been caused by [NNSA’s] semiautonomous label; that can in no way diminish the importance of secretarial buy-in to the mission. Because in the end that’s why [NNSA] is within a cabinet department. It [needs] secretarial representation, just as the energy programs and just as the science programs do. I think that was the main message of what they were saying.

PT: And secretarial buy-in hasn’t been the case?

MONIZ: I think it’s been uneven, shall we say.

PT: How can the Obama administration reconcile its “all of the above” energy policy with the urgent need to address climate change. Shouldn’t we be discouraging carbon emissions as much as we can?

MONIZ: Absolutely, and our all of the above on the fossil side is all about lowering emissions. So in coal, it’s straightforward, the focus is on carbon capture and sequestration and potentially its utilization for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Maybe in the future there’s a breakthrough on other ways of utilizing CO₂ at scale. We know how to utilize it at small scale.

Take oil, where we celebrate the economic benefits of increased oil production. That has had the impact of displacing imports. That’s really a big deal. We are now down to 4.8 million barrels a day of net imports of crude oil and oil products. Crude oil imports are still 7 million barrels a day. Therein lies the message: on the one hand the increased production is dramatically affecting the economy directly in jobs and balance of payments, by reducing imports. And now you might say indirectly, by being a significant contributor to lower global oil prices. That permeates throughout the economy. Having said that, and recognizing that we still import 7 million barrels a day, we’ve got a ways to go to try and work that import number down.

At the same time, we have not taken our eye off the ball of reducing oil dependence. Look at our programs in efficient vehicles in all their dimensions: lightweighting, SuperTruck, alternative fuels, advanced biofuels. Last year, with our assistance, the first two commercial cellulosic biorefineries [opened] up in Iowa and Kansas. Now our focus is shifting to the more challenging problem of drop-in biofuels, and to electrification of transportation, electric vehicles. Obviously we’ve got to have the electricity system decarbonized to get the full benefit of going to electric vehicles and fuel-cell vehicles. So all of the above is quite serious and quite consistent with our complete focus on low carbon.

PT: What about nuclear?

MONIZ: I didn’t mention nuclear because it doesn’t have carbon. All of the above means nukes, a whole bunch of renewables and energy efficiency. By the way, so far the natural gas increase has clearly contributed to lower carbon emissions because of its low price and its displacement of coal. But as we go forward 20 years, natural gas will also need carbon capture. In the FY 16 budget, we start moving towards a future pilot project for natural gas plants.

PT: That’s after FutureGen (a long-planned carbon capture and storage demonstration project for coal) just died.

MONIZ: Yeah, with FutureGen we prefer to say is going through a structured closeout. It’s not that it’s a bad project inherently. I’ve said consistently that demonstrating an oxy-combustion plant and going to sequestration in a deep saline aquifer, in contrast to EOR—both components of FutureGen—are very important, and we need to get them into our portfolio. What happened is, for a variety of reasons including litigation, the time line got stretched out and the [American Recovery and Reinvestment Act] funding had a drop-dead date [the end of FY 2015]. The deadline on ARRA funding was in play to be extended, right up to the end of the lame duck session, within the defense appropriations bill in the Senate. [The bill didn’t become law.] If it had been extended, we’d be doing FutureGen. But now there’s no way that everything you need can be accomplished for that project on that time scale.

PT: You’ve recused yourself from all matters affecting fusion. Does that in any way give fusion less representation vis à vis the other programs within the Office of Science?

MONIZ: Not really. I’ve done nothing to impact what [fusion energy] has come forward with.

PT: But you can’t pitch for it.

MONIZ: Can’t pitch for them. They are involved in all of our budget discussions. I just can’t touch it.