Last week, Americans for Energy Leadership welcomed its seven new 2010 Policy Fellows at our headquarters in Washington, DC to support our efforts and advance our mission of fostering the next generation of energy leaders.  All our fellows have significant experience and education in public policy, especially related to energy, and have either graduated or will soon graduate from universities including Stanford, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, Washington University in St. Louis, University of California Berkeley, Georgetown, and Claremont McKenna.

The fellows began with an advanced, comprehensive reading course in energy policy, and to capstone their first week, they wrote an article on a topic of their choice. Excerpts of these articles are included below, and full articles can be accessed at the new AEL Fellows Blog.

The Time for a New American Narrative by Sydney Baloue

Last Tuesday night President Obama took to the Oval Office to reassure the nation of the government’s concerted efforts to solve the oil spill problem in the Gulf Coast. In between hitting the right measure of sympathy for Gulf victims and scorn for BP executives, the president managed to briefly mention his not-so-distant vision for America. We heard the calls for America to wean itself off of its obsession for fossil fuels and a short point on creating a stronger clean energy industry. Most outstanding however, was how the president noted that this time signifies a chance to, “seize the moment.” But what moment are we supposed to be seizing and how?

Energy Markets and the Government by Jeremy Cohn

The United States needs to invest in energy. Global and domestic energy demand is set to skyrocket in the coming years and the US is still heavily dependent on foreign imports, inefficient technologies, and fuels that are polluting our planet and threatening massive political and economic upheaval in the coming century. Throughout our history the US has turned to the unique power of technology and government investment when private industry was not enough: the Manhattan Project, Apollo Project, DARPA, the oil crises of the 1970s, and today’s energy crisis is no different.

An International Approach to the Carbon Capture and Storage Conundrum by Daniel Goldfarb

While coal may be on the out in America, investment in CCS is still a necessary part of the United States’ energy plan. Unlike the politics which govern energy policy, the economy and environment are international issues.  Today 1.6 billion people in the world don’t have access to power.  When these people do get access to power it will be in the form of the cheapest and most accessible technology, which today has proven to be coal.

Chu’s Commencement Speech Emphasizes “Do Something” by Kimberly Munoz

Education is the cornerstone of innovation. The U.S. has one of the best higher education systems in the world, graduating thousands of students each year ready to work and create the new inventions of tomorrow. At Washington University in Saint Louis, Energy Secretary Steven Chu delivered a commencement speech urging students to “do something that matters.” Echoing Americans for Energy Leadership’s call, Secretary Chu stated the need for a “second industrial revolution to provide the world’s energy needs in an environmentally sustainable way.” To accomplish an industry that will produce energy solutions we need to provide jobs for our recent graduates in the sciences and promote energy education at the K-12 and university level.

At the Center of Crisis: An Energy Policy for America’s Future by Adam Sieff

Despite the ambiguities of his speech last Tuesday, the President still needs to frame these issues as components of a single problem facing all Americans: dependence on foreign carbon-based energy. The President’s bipartisan meeting with Senators tomorrow provides a second golden opportunity to pitch clean energy legislation to voters… The Deepwater Horizon presents more than a “Sputnik moment.” It is an opportunity to reinvent and redirect the future of this country by investing in the talents and curiosities of its brightest minds and youngest generations. It is an opportunity the President must not neglect, and which Congress must seize upon in the weeks ahead.