Farms, Energy Top Science Council's List

A top panel strongly urged further study into new energy technologies and the implications of global climate change.
Mike Lucibella, Contributor

(Inside Science) -- A scientifically sound energy and environmental policy is one of the major goals of the Obama administration, a top presidential panel announced on Friday. It strongly urged further study into new energy technologies and the implications of global climate change.

The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) held its first meeting of the new administration, outlining research areas likely to be important to the administration in the coming years. The 21-person panel is comprised of the nation’s top experts in science and technology policy. Their recommendations to the president are a strong indicator of the shape that science policy will likely take in the coming years.

"The President understands how important science and technology and science and technology education is to addressing the challenges facing the nation,” said John Holdren, chair of PCAST and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. "Energy and the environment, and the intersection of the two, will be a major focus going forward, of course, of the administration’s activities."

Speaking at the meeting, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu encouraged the committee to look into ways to innovate and adopt new energy technologies. He indicated that goal-oriented "energy innovation hubs" could be established to spur research towards solving specific energy issues. Chu was especially critical of the previous administration’s lack of scientific scrutiny when awarding research grants.

"I would love PCAST to look at the [Department of Energy] and especially the applied areas," Chu said. "What have we done right? And I want you to tell me what we have done wrong.” He added also that he hoped to bring a much stricter level of scrutiny to awarding research grants. "Just don’t fund things that violate the second law of thermodynamics."

Climate change policy is another area of departure from the previous administration., Most studies about global climate change have focused on whether the climate is actually changing. However, members of the council indicated that they would also be interested in research to study the effects of climate change and ways to adapt to it.

"The climate will continue to change, and we will experience many, many impacts, and we’ll have to adapt to those," said council member Daniel Schrag, a geology professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. "How does scientific research community deal with the issue of adaption? What is the national strategy for adaption research?"

Council members highlighted agriculture as a sector of the economy that is both vulnerable and a major contributor to climate change. Changing weather patterns could drastically reduce the amount of arable land in the United States and reduce crop production, they said. At the same time, tremendous amounts of energy are devoted to cultivating crops and raising livestock. This energy expended also contributes to the amount of carbon dioxide in the air.

"Agriculture in the U.S. is going to be facing enormous challenges," said Barbara Schaal, a biology professor at Washington University in St. Louis. "Agriculture has more impact on environment than any other human endeavor."

Members of PCAST said that new methods have been proposed in recent years to combat global climate change, but most require further study before they can be fully integrated into the global economy.

Carbon capture and sequestration is one such potential solution. Carbon dioxide from coal plants can be trapped before entering the atmosphere and stored deep underground. The council hopes assess its potential effectiveness and clear up questions about how best to trap and store the carbon without it leaching into the atmosphere.

Carbon offsets have also been suggested as a means to reduce greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Preserving and expanding forested areas should reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. So far there are few effective tools for gauging how effective these offsets might be, said Robert Sussman, the Senior Policy Council at the Environmental Protection Agency.

“Clearly, there's been an enormous push by the administration in terms of new ways of getting energy research and development discussed and novel approaches to innovation,” said Ernest Moniz, director of the MIT Energy Initiative in Cambridge, Mass.