Energy Innovation Hubs– Enabling New Means of Accelerating Energy Research and Development

On June 3, 2009, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu explained his vision for the Energy Innovation Hubs in testimony before the House Energy and Water Appropriation Sub-Committee. He said:

The proposed Energy Innovation Hubs will take a very different approach – they will be multi-disciplinary, highly collaborative teams ideally working under one roof to solve priority technology challenges, such as artificial photosynthesis (creating fuels from sunlight).

A few years ago, I changed the course of my scientific work to focus on solving our energy and climate challenges. I did so because of the great national and global urgency of this issue – but also because, as a scientist, I remain optimistic that science can offer us better solutions than we can imagine today. But those solutions won't come easily; they will only come if we harness the creativity and ingenuity and intellectual horsepower of our best scientists in the right way.

Having dedicated the last several years of my work to solving the energy challenge, I’m convinced that launching Energy Innovation Hubs is a critical next step in this effort. Bringing together the best scientists from different disciplines in collaborative efforts is our best hope of achieving priority goals such as making solar energy cost competitive with fossil fuels, or developing new building designs that use dramatically less energy, or developing an economical battery that will take your car 300 miles without recharging.

These are the breakthroughs we need – and the Energy Innovation Hubs will help us achieve them. I saw the power of truly collaborative science like this firsthand during my time at Bell Laboratories. I believe that to solve the energy problem, the Department of Energy must strive to be the modern version of Bell Labs in energy research, and that is what these Hubs will do. They will essentially be little “Bell Lablets.”

The scientific collaboration the Hubs will foster will be unique and indispensible, and must be backed by a meaningful and sustained investment. These investments will pay for themselves many times over, ensuring American leadership and American competitiveness when it comes to the green energy jobs of tomorrow.