President Obama is making some incredibly good appointments to the DOE.  On March 20, he announced the nomination of  David Sandalow as Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs and Steven Koonin as Undersecretary for Science in the DOE.  A. Siegel, writing at DailyKos, provided some background on the two, along with another person who turned out not to be a nominee.  

David Sandalow wrote a book, "Freedom From Oil: How the Next President can End the United States' Addiction to Oil", that Siegel, a true energy expert, raved about. He described it as "a template on how to move within the bureaucratic structure of US government toward policy decisions on the critical issue of oil independence".  He is also the co-author of a January 2009 Brookings report roadmap entitled, "Overcoming Obstacles to U.S.-China Cooperation on Climate Change".  Sandalow served in the Clinton Administration as the Assistant Secretary for Oceans, Environment, and Science, U.S. State Department; Senior Director for Environmental Affairs, National Security Council; and the Associate Director for the Global Environment, White House Council on Environmental Quality.  He was Executive Vice President, World Wildlife Fund and runs part of the Clinton Climate Initiative.  He is currently a fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Steven Koonin is currently BP's chief scientist, focusing on the "beyond petroleum" elements.  Prior to that, he was at Caltech for 30 years, including a decade as Provost.  In 2006, Koonin and Chu were interviewed for APS Physics on the road to energy independence.  They talked about the need to refocus US R&D to transition to a carbon-reduced economy.  Chu said, "The good news is that a lot of scientists who were focused on very basic research are now waking up and saying, 'Maybe I should start thinking about this problem.' Solving the energy problem is of such importance that it needs our best and brightest."

Koonin said that he thought that the world's best scientific talent was beginning to focus on the problem.  Then he added, "But it also requires a research program that is rationally based, that certainly has a blue-sky component but also focuses on those technologies that look most promising. The program management needs to be much more technically informed. It needs to be sustained. And it needs to be able to fail." 

To which Chu replied, in the last segment Siegel quoted in his post, "...and we need to fail quickly. That’s the key to success. After some initial research tells you that a potential solution won’t scale properly, it is important to move on as quickly as possible to other opportunities."

This is looking good.