Steven Chu:From Nobel Prize to Secretary of Energy

Three days before the good news of his appointment as a cabinet official was received, Stephen Chu was in Taiwan to participate in the "Academy Presidents' Forum" as part of the celebrations of the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Academia Sinica, sharing the same hall with institute leaders from 13 countries around the globe. During his turn at the podium, Chu, who is concurrently a member of Academia Sinica, presented his views about current world energy problems.

Don't doubt, don't delay

He pointed out that global warming will cause large areas of alpine coniferous forest to disappear, causing many areas, including the American West, to go from being fertile to being barren. This will unleash furious conflicts over water and arable land, while simultaneously hundreds of millions of people will be displaced by rising sea levels. If we don't want to follow in the wake of the Titanic and drown in our own hubris, then governments must adopt relevant policies as quickly as possible.

He called on governments of all countries to spend less time on "national security" and more on the energy crunch. Only with energy security will governments really enjoy national security.

Chu stated that like 1950s scientists who at first could only draw crude correlations between cigarette smoking and lung cancer, when he first began researching global warming there was great uncertainty about its severity and impact. But now as he sees the earlier predictions of scientists coming true one after the other, he realizes that time is critical, and we cannot afford niggling doubts.

In his remarks he talked about the need for a second Industrial Revolution and a second Green Revolution based on sustainable global resources. Just as the appearance of chemical fertilizers in the 1960s and 1970s permitted a huge increase in grain production, and rescued humankind from the violence that might have resulted from the population explosion, he also places his hopes for today in a technological revolution. Thus he called on the scientific community in all nations to work with a spirit of exploration and discovery to find a comprehensive model that will change existing energy supply and demand.

Myth-busting

Moreover, Chu commented that he hopes he can break three great energy myths believed by many ordinary people-especially ordinary Americans.

First, he noted that many people think, "The wealth of a country is proportional to the energy it uses and its carbon footprint." But in countries that are just as developed as the US such as the UK, France, the Netherlands, and Japan, energy consumption per person is far below that in the States. This proves that higher energy consumption does not mean that your country is more advanced.

Chu pointed out that people are constantly in search of faster computers, but most only use them for word processing; we keep buying bigger and bigger refrigerators, but don't actually change our food intake. Many people use up energy without getting any corresponding benefit, which is really unfortunate.

The second myth is that "energy efficiency and CO2 reductions are not affordable."

Steven Chu pointed out that if governments would only legislate standards, companies would be stimulated to develop new technology. For example, over many years requirements for energy efficiency of refrigerators have steadily become more rigorous, successfully driving new technological innovations, yet the resulting products are also cheaper as well as being more energy efficient. The amount of energy saved in this one area alone is more than the total of all renewable energy generated in the US today! If similar standards could be set for all consumer electronics and computers, the results would, he argued, be similarly startling.

Who's against a white roof?!

To take another example, if all black-colored, tarred roofs of flat-topped office buildings and warehouses in the world were changed to white pebble, and roads and sidewalks were changed to some other lighter colored material, like concrete, so that sunlight was reflected, the amount saved in terms of air conditioning and so on would be equivalent to removing 44 billion tons of carbon from the air. That is the same as taking all the vehicles in the entire world off the roads for 11 years!

In a separate interview with Taiwan Panorama, Chu related that "architects in California used to argue very strongly that they did not want a regulation that says the roof must be light colored, even if it's a flattop roof and you can't see it! Perhaps it may be a tiny bit more expensive but in a short time you will pay back the slightly higher cost of a white roof from savings in air conditioning. But many people [who are opposed] will say that anything you want them to do will be more expensive, simply because they are not used to thinking about it that way. It's just ignorance."

Similarly, for a typical house it would cost only US$1000 to increase insulation. Compared to the US$100-200,000 it costs to build a house, this is marginal, not to mention the fact that in the future the owner will save big bucks on heating and/or air conditioning. But builders are still resisting. The reason they give is that if this US$1000 is added to the costs of building new homes, then they will be $1000 less competitive compared to old houses!

The third widely quoted myth Chu mentioned in his talk at Academia Sinica was: "We have all the technology we need to solve the energy problem. It is only a matter of political will."

Chu says that while of course political will is necessary, only with new technology can the current "energy landscape" be transformed.

Chu enlarged on this point in our interview. "Most people in the world think of the day-to-day things, here and now. Right now they're consumed by inflation and the economic slump. But over the long term, there's growing evidence that some very bad things could happen" if we don't change our energy habits. As an example of the limitations of current technology, many countries still build coal-fired power plants, which produce very high carbon emissions. China, for instance, is building new coal-fired plants at the mind-boggling rate of two per week. Considering that these will be in use for 50 years, it's not hard to imagine their enormous greenhouse effect. It is critical for governments to sit down and talk about these things right now.

The microbiology of termites

Looking to future technologies, right now Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is undertaking a project to do artificial photosynthesis on a large scale. One possible pathway involves using "composite biochemicals" to develop new plants that can be easily broken down and which can be planted in poor quality soil, able to survive on only sunlight and a small amount of water so that they will not affect food supply. Technically, a huge headache is figuring out how to break down tough wood or fibrous matter to turn them into energy.

Chu believes that the best source of ideas is to "imitate nature." His current teachers are the microbes in the bodies of termites. One tiny termite tummy has over a hundred types of microbes, and through a complex division of labor they turn the wood fragments swallowed by termites into energy. If scientists can figure out how these little guys operate, and follow up with gene modification, they might be able to replicate the process. But Chu admits that right now it is too early to tell, and there is a long road ahead.

"He can grab an atom!"

From winning a Nobel Prize in physics to striving to break the secret of the "tiny magicians" inside termites, Chu's research has changed directions many times over a long and exciting career. He himself is a model of what he advocated in his Academy Presidents' Forum remarks: that research institutes should encourage scientists to do original and cross-field free exploration.

Chu, who has been studying physics for nearly 40 years, is best known for figuring out a way to "trap" atoms using "laser cooling." The process requires six laser beams which bounce photons off of atoms. With one laser, an atom-which under normal condition can move at speeds reaching 4000 kilometers per hour with a direction that cannot be known with certainty-is cooled to temperatures near absolute zero (-273°C), slowing it down so it can be observed. If it tries to escape, it is knocked back into place by other lasers, thus making the "trap" from which it cannot escape. This breakthrough, which can be applied in many fields of science, has enabled humans to realize the dream of "grabbing an atom," and is the achievement for which Chu was named one of the three 1997 Nobel laureates in physics.

One of the ingredients in the development of laser trapping was the invention of the "optical tweezer," which is used to trap and observe microscopic particles, and has been widely applied in biology. For example, it can be used to manipulate bodies inside living cells without breaking the cell walls, to study muscle contraction at the sub-molecular level, and even to manipulate DNA molecules to study questions like how genes do self-repair.

Physics foundation

Steven Chu, who was born and raised in the US, has since childhood been very curious about nature, and has always been a "hands-on" person. In kindergarten he assembled model airplanes and tanks, and the rugs in his home were covered with all kinds of construction sets. He and some classmates even built a rocket, and Chu earned pocket money by analyzing the soil content of the gardens of neighbors. But among all his explorations in science, he was most intoxicated by physics.

He defines physics as "a way of understanding nature." Chu says that the strength of physics is that it starts by asking very, very simple questions. For example, just letting something fall to the ground looks pretty simple, but through asking what is actually happening, it is possible to come up with mathematical models and calculate the gravitational acceleration of the object so that we can understand the principles of gravity and attraction.

"But even better than that," he says, "we can take those laws and extrapolate them. Suppose you are a psychologist or a psychiatrist. No psychologist would ever say, 'I know precisely what this person will do an hour from now, a week from now, or a year from now.' Whereas a physicist can say, 'Yes, I think I can tell that this is gonna happen.'" Thus, over the 400 years since Galileo asked his simple questions, humankind has been able to apply the resulting principles to things like manufacturing spacecraft and exploring the galaxy.

Interestingly, when Chu graduated from high school and wanted to go directly into studying physics at university, his father, who had always respected his children's opinions, was opposed. One reason was that there are so many brilliant minds in physics, it is difficult to stand out; he also worried that his lively and outgoing son would not be able to put up with the long, dry days of lab work.

Chu relates that his father thought he had a talent for painting and drawing, so his father thought Steven should study architecture. But the son stuck to his guns and majored in physics and math at the University of Rochester in upstate New York. He later earned his doctorate in physics from UCal Berkeley.

Chu says that in his time the most outstanding students were all going in for physics and math. Unfortunately, physics is profoundly challenging while being less than useful for making money, so a lot of people eventually leave the field. But that's OK with him: "We don't need an army of average physicists; one brilliant theoretical physicist could be better than hundreds of average theoretical physicists."

Accepting new challenges

As for his ability to change directions in his research, he believes that with a foundation in physics, it is much easier to learn new fields. The most obvious example is that since the mid-20th century, many of the Nobel laureates in chemistry, biology, medicine, and even economics have had a background in physics. On the other hand, there has never been any scientist whose background is not in physics to have crossed over to win the Nobel for that field.

Many people outside the profession ascribe Chu's successes to his family connections. In fact, he has worked very hard, putting in over 60 hours a week. He argues that there is no shortcut to learning-you just have to keep plowing ahead through all obstacles, and most importantly you have to train yourself in "how to learn" and grow step by step.

The current transition from research institute to politics may be the most important learning experience and adventure in Chu's life. This is particularly so seeing as Barack Obama has promised to promote a green administration with clean energy at its core, and to create millions of jobs connected to environmental protection. If Chu can plow through the obstacles and make this prodigious project into reality, his achievement will be even greater than winning another Nobel Prize!