National labs help energize summit

SUNNYVALE — About 25 panelists gathered last Thursday (July 30) at the Council on Competitiveness' Western Energy Summit to examine the ways that more clean energy sources could be developed.

Held at NASA Ames Research Center, the summit panelists included representatives from venture capital firms, solar companies, an oil company, national labs, two University of California campuses (UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz) and a number of other organizations.

Last week's event was sponsored by NASA Ames, LLNL, LBNL, UC and CMEA Capital. One of the driving forces behind the conference was LLNL Acting Science and Technology Principal Associate Director Tomás Díaz de la Rubia, who also is the Laboratory's chief research and development officer.

During the discussion, the moderator, Tyler Suiters, chief correspondent of Clean Skies News television, asked whether the nation's Department of Energy national laboratories could help fill part off the void left by cutbacks at once-powerhouse industrial research labs, such as Bell Laboratories.

George Miller, LLNL's director, and Arun Majumdar, the associate director for energy and environment at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), indicated that they believe the national labs can help fill this void.

"In many respects, these institutions are truly remarkable already," Miller said. "In the recent R&D 100 awards competition, the DOE won more than 40 of the 100 awards, and our Laboratory won eight of them. Almost all of these institutions have an incredible ability to go from fundamental basic science to a deployed idea very rapidly. This is their strength."

LLNL not only uses teams of chemists, physicists and computational scientists, but also deploys engineers and technicians who build instruments and scientific equipment, Miller said, adding: "This is a powerful and unique set of capabilities.

"We have ideas of how we can make truly revolutionary advances in energy," Miller said. "We just need a mandate to do it."

Majumdar told the audience that while he had never worked at Bell Laboratories, he did interact with fellow scientists and engineers there.

"We at the national labs have a concentration and critical mass of people, with the ability to use the best groups of scientists and engineers to solve a problem," Majumdar said. "We need to support them with the right kind of funding and resources. I believe our team science can help fill the void."

In another area, Miller said: "I think one of the fundamental issues the country has to come to grips with is: What is the role of government in developing energy technologies?"

In the 1970s, when the nation was racked by long gas station lines, about 30 percent of LLNL's budget was devoted to energy development, Miller said. When the gas lines went away, the energy technology funding also went away.

"The power of the national laboratory system is developing technologies that require sustainability in funding," Miller said.

Several panelists expressed optimism that the United States and the world are on the verge of a "green revolution" in the years to come.

Tom Baruch, the founder and managing director of CMEA Capital, recalled that he had worked on developing batteries and photovoltaics in the 1970s when he worked at Exxon. "The economics were an order of magnitude (or 10-fold) off.

"I believe we are on the cusp of a green energy revolution. What has changed since 1973 are the genomics and information technology revolutions. The availability of those tools puts us in a position to use a number of alternative energy technologies we wouldn't have otherwise been able to use."

LBNL's Majumdar noted, "We need an Industrial Revolution in energy technologies." This revolution needs to be analogous to the invention of the airplane, the transistor and the Internet, he said, adding, "And we don't have Bell Labs any more.

"The national laboratories have an extremely important role to play in partnership with business, academia and the investment community."

Other critical factors in advancing a green revolution in energy technologies, Majumdar said, are education, upgraded manufacturing, government policy, tax incentives and technology — and they are all needed at the same time.

The founder of CMEA Capital told the audience there is a need to implement tax policies that encourage innovation. "We have to produce policies that encourage entrepreneurs to move ahead."

In 2008, venture capital-funded companies accounted for $2.8 trillion of the economy and about 12 million jobs, Baruch said.

Mike Kluse, the director of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, indicated that one of the key issues is the rate of innovation in energy development

"As a country, I don't think we can do it alone; we need to engage our world partners," he said. Kluse suggested that novel public-private partnerships need to be formed and that the nation should look to partnerships with the People's Republic of China.        

Following the Thursday morning leadership roundtable, two panels of experts were convened in the afternoon. Three LLNL employees — Julio Friedmann, the Lab's Carbon Management Program leader; Jane Long, a principal associate director at-large and fellow in the Center for Global Security Research; and Erik Storm, the director for Advanced Inertial Fusion Energy Programs — participated in those workshops.

Founded in 1986 by John Young of Hewlett-Packard and Kay Graham, the then publisher of The Washington Post , the Council on Competitiveness is a group of CEOs, university presidents and labor leaders who work together to ensure U.S. prosperity.

A nonpartisan, nongovernmental organization in Washington D.C., the council shapes the debate on competitiveness by evaluating economic challenges and opportunities.

In addition to last week's Western Energy Summit, the council also has staged similar forums in Houston, at Rutgers University in New Jersey and at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. The regional energy summits are part of the council's broader Energy Sustainability, Innovation and Security (ESIS) initiative.

Miller is a member of the initiative's steering committee and Díaz de la Rubia serves as his representative. The council's ESIS initiative will be the focus of a national summit in September in Washington D.C.