Skip to footer

Jack Lew, picked for Treasury post, has ties to energy

Jack Lew may be best known for budgetary finesse, but President Obama's pick for the next Treasury secretary has experience in the energy world. Would the energy industry have an ally in Jack Lew?

|
Charles Dharapak/AP
White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew is seated in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Monday. President Obama has tapped Mr. Lew, who has a latent background in energy, to serve as the next Treasury secretary.
  • By David J. Unger Correspondent

Jack Lew is not headed to the Department of Energy, but President Obama's pick for Treasury secretary has long experience in energy efficiency and clean energy and could prove a helpful ally to the energy industry.

Best known for his budgetary finesse as a two-time director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Mr. Lew also knows energy.

From 1988 to 1993, Lew was a partner at Van Ness Feldman, a Washington-based law firm focusing on energy and environment law. While at the firm, Lew specialized in issues related to power plant development, according to a White House press release. 

When he was tapped to replace Bill Daley as Obama's chief of staff last January, the Alliance to Save Energy praised Lew as a "friend of energy efficiency and clean energy." The energy efficiency advocacy group pointed to Lew's work in helping to develop the Electric Transportation Coalition, an industry organization now known as the Electric Drive Transportation Association.  

"Jack was passionate about the prospects that electric transportation and the energy efficiency gains and diversity the emerging technology promised our economy," said Kateri Callahan, president of the Alliance to Save Energy and former president and executive director of the Electric Drive Transportation Association, in a January 2012 statement. "His handiwork lives on in the Electric Drive Transportation Coalition and his work to advance new clean energy technologies and practices widened as his career took him once again into public service.”

Lew first served as White House budget director in the Clinton administration. In his second stint as director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, under President Obama, Lew worked to increase funding for energy initiatives like ARPA-E, the Department of Energy's advanced energy technology research program, Callahan said. He left that position in 2012 to become Mr. Obama's chief of staff.

While the bulk of energy programs are run out of the Department of Energy, the Treasury oversees the 1603 program, which awards reimbursements in the form of cash grants for the installment of energy – mostly solar – properties. 

The program, started in 2009, has provided $13 billion in grants to 45,172 projects as of July 2012, according to the department, with a total of $13 billion in grants. The total installed capacity amounts to 20.5 GW.

When reached for comment on Lew's potential new post, Ms. Callahan said she expected continued support for energy efficiency initiatives.

"Obama is one of the most significant energy-efficiency champions, and Jack is in there to put in place the president’s policies and vision," Callahan said via telephone. "He will do that with passion and energy." 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Jack Lew, picked for Treasury post, has ties to energy
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2013/0109/Jack-Lew-picked-for-Treasury-post-has-ties-to-energy
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe