Obama’s Energy Secretary is starting a low-carbon energy think tank

Energy Futures Initiative will offer analysis to “policymakers, industry executives, and NGOs.”

Former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced that he is establishing an energy-focused think tank to provide research and analysis for state and local governments, industry leaders, and NGOs.

The organization, called Energy Futures Initiative (EFI), aims to provide analytical and technical reports on a wide variety of energy-related topics. The first eight topics that EFI will address are listed on its website and cover areas from “Modernizing the North American Energy Sector” to “Decarbonization of Energy Systems” and “Evolution of Natural Gas Markets.”

The EFI’s first study, called “Modernizing the North American Energy Sector,” is due in the fall, and group spokesman David Ellis said that the group is currently working on three or four topics. The report will take a look at baseload energy and grid reliability, with a view to providing strategies for regional energy authorities to modernize their systems and improve reliability. That may sound startlingly similar to a baseload study that current DOE secretary Rick Perry has ordered, which is due out at the end of this month. But in his Wednesday morning announcement at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, Moniz stressed that EFI’s study is not in response or related to Perry’s study. “I want to emphasize that this... initiative has been in formation now since—basically since we left the Department in January. It is not in response to recent events.”

However, EFI is not shying away from responding to Trump’s recent promise to pull out of the Paris Agreement, the multilateral agreement that Moniz worked on as energy secretary. Moniz said that Trump’s announcing his intention to withdraw was “obviously not something that I’m very supportive of.” But, he added, Trump’s decision has created a “tremendous response from mayors and governors and universities and business leaders, etc., all stepping forward with a consistent message that ‘look, we’re not going back, this is where the world is going, this is where the United States is going, to a low-carbon future.’”

“They also want to fill some of the leadership void, frankly,” Moniz said. He added that his aim is to work on a regional level. "There will be a lot of need for strong, analytically-based, technologically-savvy studies, etc., and those are the kinds things that we’ll be looking at in many areas in the energy system," he said.

EFI is also under the direction of two co-principals—Joseph Hezir and Melanie Kenderdine, both former Department of Energy associates of Moniz. Hezir worked as CFO under Moniz while Kenderdine was concurrently the Director of the Office of Energy Policy and Systems Analysis at the DOE.

The first public funding EFI has received comes from the Emerson Collective, an organization started by Laurene Powell Jobs, a business executive and the widow of Steve Jobs. The Emerson Collective funds work on “education, immigration reform, the environment, and other social justice initiatives.”