Thank you for having me this morning, and thank you, Dr. [Rush] Holt.
Today I want to talk primarily about the future of a set of institutions that are contributors to a vibrant American science and technology system – our DOE National Labs, and then also about Mission Innovation, a multilateral initiative that puts energy technology innovation squarely at the center of our approach to climate change mitigation.
With regard to the Labs, I’ve seen them from many angles – as an MIT physicist and Director of the Bates Linear Accelerator, which was a smaller DOE user facility and as OSTP Associate Director for Science and as Under Secretary at DOE during the later years of the Clinton Administration, and as a working scientist.
Over a forty year period, I had the opportunity to how our labs function, and how they have changed.
And I have come to appreciate even more that the National Labs are critical institutions in this community of scientific research – as individual labs, but especially as a network.
Coming into my role as Secretary, I knew that stewardship of the National Lab system was a big responsibility.
Several recent reports have found that since the end of the Cold War, the relationship between DOE and its National Labs has become increasingly transactional, leading to often strained relationships that could diminish the effectiveness of the Labs over time.
Establishing a strong, productive partnership between the Department of Energy and the National Labs – one in which a more strategic relationship is established – is one of my highest priorities.
So today I want discuss some of the issues identified by the recent set of reports. I will outline the strategic, enterprise-wide steps that I have taken to improve our relationship with the Labs, and I will also describe some of the work that remains to be done.
The Department of Energy is, at its core, a science and technology organization that advances critical missions for the American people: nuclear security; clean energy innovation and energy security; environmental remediation, particularly from the Cold War; and scientific leadership and discovery.
Every one of those missions is based on science and technology. The Department of Energy fundamentally is a science and technology organization, and we hope to be good stewards of that system.
The National Laboratories comprise the most comprehensive research network of its kind in the world. They are essential links in the Nation’s innovation chain. Each has distinctive capabilities, and together, they are greater than the sum of their parts.
Individually and collectively, the Labs conduct cutting-edge fundamental and applied scientific research. They are one of the Nation’s most effective “on call” resources for tackling unprecedented challenges – from the threat of unsecured nuclear materials as the Soviet Union collapsed, to the Macondo oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, to the Fukushima nuclear disaster, to deep and rapid scientific analyses for the Iran nuclear negotiations.
Some of our capabilities will be on display on April 20th, at the latest in our series of Lab Days on the Hill, this one focusing on our science mission, grouped into several areas:
Science and Facilities shows off our 21st century tools for investigation from the atomic scale to the universe scale, through powerful x-rays and neutron facilities and powerful light sources. Last year we had nearly 35,000 users of roughly 30 user facilities in our 17 National Labs.
Science of Computation looks at high-performance computing technologies originally driven by the nuclear weapons stockpile stewardship program. Over the past twenty years, these tools have directly translated into important advances for science and energy – from high performance simulations of combustion to simulations of light water reactors to maximizing the configurations of wind turbines.
And that high-performance computing will soon help support Vice President Biden’s cancer taskforce.
Science of Energy includes everything from next-generation biofuels, to nuclear reactors, to battery technologies.
Science of the Environment looks at understanding the Earth system, including for example the subsurface systems and the transport of pollutants.
And finally, the Science of the Universe, spanning from particle physics to very large facilities helping to study the origins of the universe.
Each of these areas and DOE’s accomplishments in each area illustrate why we need to be good stewards of the National Laboratory system and its science and technology expertise.
Over the past 40 years, more than 50 reviews and studies of the National Laboratories have been conducted.
Most recently, Congress directed formation of the Commission to Review the Effectiveness of the National Energy Laboratories (CRENEL), co-chaired by Jared Cohon and TJ Glauthier.
Separately, Norman Augustine and Admiral Richard Mies, also tasked by Congress, led a governance review of the nuclear security enterprise.
In addition, I asked for and received a report from the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board’s Task Force on the DOE National Laboratories, led by John Deutch and Arun Majumdar, to provide guidance on issues related to improving the health and management of the Labs.
All of the feedback I have received emphasizes the unparalleled value of the National Laboratory system to the Nation, serving as a science and technology powerhouse, and occupying a critical role that cannot be carried out solely by universities or the private sector.
These reports note that since the end of the Cold War, oversight by DOE has grown increasingly transactional rather than strategically mission-driven. Let me share with you what we have done at DOE to reverse this trend.
The reports appropriately emphasize the importance of the Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) model.
We need an environment in which DOE sets the mission needs and provides oversight, while the managing contractor and laboratory leadership and staff put together the teams and structure programs in response to the mission needs.
I believe an enterprise-wide approach is needed, and that is what I have pursued.
As Secretary, I have taken several steps to implement an enterprise-wide strategic approach that recognizes the value of this network, as well as the individual institutions.
Our team has aimed to re-set to a mission-oriented relationship that provides strong guidance on what should be done, with a greater degree of flexibility about how that goal is achieved, and a greater emphasis on cross-cutting work. So for example:
We established things like a Laboratory Policy Council and a Laboratory Operations Board to convene a senior-level strategic dialogue on everything from strategic opportunities to management challenges.
To strengthen project management, we established a Project Management Risk Committee, restructured the Energy Systems Acquisition Advisory Board, and reinforced the independent peer review process, with the idea that we could head off problems earlier in the process.
We created an annual Big Ideas Summit that convenes lab scientists and Departmental program leadership to propose and explore innovative ideas for solutions to key energy issues, and work across silos. The first summit resulted in major Departmental initiatives such as the Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium, aimed at creating an adaptive and resilient U.S. electric grid.
We are also paying attention to the basic blocking and tackling of good management – things like how we award contracts, and things like burdensome practices. If we can be more efficient, we can devote more resources to science.
For example, we updated DOE’s conference management approach. The prior approach had been overly centralized and burdensome, and we now have an approach that streamlines the process and decisions.
The CRENEL report also recommended an annual report on the state of the laboratories. We will kick off this year with a report that will – for the first time – encompass the mission and value of the laboratories, what they accomplish, and what the management challenges and our responses are.
So as you can see, we are moving on many fronts to strengthen our stewardship of this critical network of research institutions.
Let me now say a few words about Mission Innovation.
The COP21 negotiations in Paris were a historic success, with almost every country in the world putting forward objectives for their climate goals.
The very first day of the negotiations in Paris, on the day that national leaders, including President Obama were present, Mission Innovation was announced.
The 20 Mission Innovation countries, representing 80 percent of clean energy research and development budgets worldwide, came together and pledged to seek to double their research and development funding over the next five years.
The idea is to really open up the innovation pipeline and to create more investable opportunities for carrying these technologies to the marketplace.
Mission Innovation will take place in parallel with a private-sector effort called the Breakthrough Energy Coalition. That effort, led by Bill Gates, is a group of 28 private investors from 10 countries who have pledged long-term, patient capital to invest in technologies from Mission Innovation countries.
Having investors like these, who are interested in transformative energy technologies, and have a large-scale long-term investment capacity, will be a tremendous support to developing technologies.
The reality is, the commitments made in Paris will not get us to the end game that we need. That means that as we go forward, we must increase our ambition. A very important part of that ambition, especially in developing countries, will have to come from continued success in driving down the costs of these clean energy technologies. Lower costs will come with innovation. That’s what Mission Innovation aims to do.
For this community, Mission Innovation is an important development because it highlights that innovation has been placed very much at the center of global thinking about how we are going to meet our climate goals.
Again, I want to thank AAAS for this opportunity to speak, and I look forward to your questions.
