Moniz (center) tours a supercomputer.

President Obama today officially nominated nuclear physicist Ernest Moniz to become the thirteenth United States Secretary of Energy. If confirmed, Moniz will replace the outgoing Steven Chu, who announced his resignation in early February.

Moniz is no stranger to the White House or Capitol Hill. He served as an Under-Secretary at the Energy Department during Bill Clinton’s term as President, where he helped oversee a chain of national laboratories and manage the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile. He has also testified before Congress numerous times regarding energy issues, such as how natural gas will eventually replace coal as the main source of electricity.

Moniz recently served as director of MIT’s Energy Initiative, a research group that gets funding from powerful companies like BP and Chevron to work on projects aimed at reducing climate-changing greenhouse gases. Founded in 2006, MITEI has supported hundreds of research programs, and it was praised by Obama early in his first term. He was also put on Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission to look for a new approach to storing toxic nuclear waste after the Yucca Mountain waste site in Nevada was shut down.

His nomination comes on the heels of Steven Chu’s four-year tenure as Energy Secretary. Chu, a Nobel Prize winner in physics, came to the Energy Secretary post in 2009 from Lawrence Livermore National Lab. Under his watch, the production of renewable energy from wind and solar power in the U.S. doubled, and hydraulic fracturing unleashed a production boom for U.S. natural gas. The most consequential time of his term was the green energy stimulus, which included billions of dollars for clean energy loan guarantees. Of this vast program, the failure of the $528 million Solyndra loan has received the most coverage, even though it is an outlier on an otherwise largely successful program.

Moniz is a nuclear physicist by training, and he understands the importance of nuclear power in U.S. energy production. He has promoted natural gas as a “bridge fuel” in lowering carbon pollution while new forms of energy are being developed. He is also a proponent of hydraulic fracturing, noting in a 2011 testimony to the Senate Energy Committee that the pollution risks associated with fracking are “challengeable but manageable” given the right amount of oversight.

Moniz’s background as a nuclear physicist will be important in making decisions about the next step in America’s energy. ASP firmly believes that fusion is an important goal because it will act as a source of clean, sustainable, and affordable energy for the United States. As far back as 1999, Moniz was discussing this idea:

“It is not yet possible to determine what role fusion will, or can, play in the 21st century, but the fusion community should be prepared to take advantage of opportunities…It serves customers’ desires. This is a profoundly important development, and it promises to benefit various renewable energy technologies and nuclear technologies, though perhaps fission in the nearer term and fusion in the long run.”

While Moniz’s support for natural gas might draw opposition from some on the left opposed to fracking, he has a good mixture of political and scientific experience that would be necessary in advancing the energy agenda of the Obama administration. His membership on the President’s Council of Advisor’s on Science shows how highly regarded he is by President Obama. Moniz could be an important addition to the cabinet, and ASP looks forward to working with him in ensuring that America’s energy future is more secure, safe, and sustainable.

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