United States Secretary of Energy | |
---|---|
United States Department of Energy | |
Style | Madam Secretary (informal) The Honorable (formal) |
Member of | United States Cabinet United States National Security Council |
Reports to | President of the United States |
Seat | James V. Forrestal Building, Washington, D.C. |
Appointer | The President of the United States with Senate advice and consent |
Term length | No fixed term |
Constituting instrument | 42 U.S.C. § 7131 |
Formation | August 6, 1977 |
First holder | James R. Schlesinger |
Succession | Fifteenth [1] |
Deputy | Deputy Secretary |
Salary | Executive Schedule, level I |
Website | Energy.gov |
The United States secretary of energy is the head of the United States Department of Energy, a member of the Cabinet of the United States, and fifteenth in the presidential line of succession. The position was created on October 1, 1977, when President Jimmy Carter signed the Department of Energy Organization Act, establishing the department. [2] The energy secretary and the department originally focused on energy production and regulation. The emphasis soon shifted to developing technology for better and more efficient energy sources, as well as energy education. After the end of the Cold War, the department's attention also turned toward radioactive waste disposal and the maintenance of environmental quality. [3] Former secretary of defense James Schlesinger served as the first secretary of energy. As a Republican nominated to the post by Democratic president Jimmy Carter, Schlesinger's appointment marks the only time a president has chosen a member of another political party for the position. Schlesinger is also the only secretary to be dismissed from the post. [4] Hazel O'Leary, Bill Clinton's first secretary of energy, was the first female and first African American to hold the position. [5] The first Hispanic to serve as Energy Secretary was Clinton's second energy secretary, Federico Peña. [6] Spencer Abraham became the first Arab American to hold the position on January 20, 2001, serving under the administration of George W. Bush. Steven Chu became the first Asian American to hold the position on January 20, 2009, serving under president Barack Obama. Chu was also the longest-serving secretary of energy and the first individual to join the Cabinet after having received a Nobel Prize. [7]
President Joe Biden's nominee to be Secretary of Energy, former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, was confirmed on February 25, 2021. Granholm is the second woman to lead the Department of Energy. [8]
In addition to responsibilities related to generation and use of energy, the secretary is the most senior official other than the president of the United States or Secretary of Defense with primary responsibility for the nation's ~3,800 viable nuclear weapons. This arrangement is intended to maintain full civilian control over strategic weapons, except as directed by the president for specific military uses.[ citation needed ] The department of energy is responsible for the building, maintenance, and disposal of all nuclear weapons within the United States' arsenal in addition to safeguarding these weapons when they are not actively deployed in military service. Under the terms of several successive treaties, most recently New START, the United States has reduced its strategic arsenal to 1500 deployed weapons. Consequently, many older legacy weapons systems have been dismantled or scheduled for dismantlement, with their core radioactive fuel - generally plutonium - being reprocessed into reactor-grade or space exploration fuel.[ citation needed ]
Democratic (7) Republican (9)[ citation needed ]
Status
Acting Secretary of Energy
No. | Portrait | Name | State of residence | Took office | Left office | Party | President(s) | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | James Schlesinger | Virginia | August 6, 1977 | August 23, 1979 | Republican | Jimmy Carter | ||
2 | Charles Duncan | Texas | August 24, 1979 | January 20, 1981 | Democratic | |||
3 | James Edwards | South Carolina | January 23, 1981 | November 5, 1982 | Republican | Ronald Reagan | ||
4 | Donald Hodel | Oregon | November 5, 1982 | February 7, 1985 | Republican | |||
5 | John Herrington | California | February 7, 1985 | January 20, 1989 | Republican | |||
6 | James Watkins | California | March 1, 1989 | January 20, 1993 | Republican | George H. W. Bush | ||
7 | Hazel O'Leary | Virginia | January 22, 1993 | January 20, 1997 | Democratic | Bill Clinton | ||
– | Charles B. Curtis | Pennsylvania | January 20, 1997 | March 12, 1997 | Democratic | |||
8 | Federico Peña | Colorado | March 12, 1997 | June 30, 1998 | Democratic | |||
9 | Bill Richardson | New Mexico | August 18, 1998 | January 20, 2001 | Democratic | |||
10 | Spencer Abraham | Michigan | January 20, 2001 | February 1, 2005 | Republican | George W. Bush | ||
11 | Samuel Bodman | Illinois | February 1, 2005 | January 20, 2009 | Republican | |||
12 | Steven Chu | California | January 20, 2009 | April 22, 2013 | Democratic | Barack Obama | ||
– | Daniel Poneman | Ohio | April 22, 2013 | May 21, 2013 | Democratic | |||
13 | Ernest Moniz | Massachusetts | May 21, 2013 | January 20, 2017 | Democratic | |||
– | Grace Bochenek | January 20, 2017 | March 2, 2017 | Donald Trump | ||||
14 | Rick Perry | Texas | March 2, 2017 | December 1, 2019 | Republican | |||
15 | Dan Brouillette | Texas | December 1, 2019 | December 4, 2019 | Republican | |||
December 4, 2019 | January 20, 2021 | |||||||
– | David Huizenga | January 20, 2021 | February 25, 2021 | Democratic | Joe Biden | |||
16 | Jennifer Granholm | Michigan | February 25, 2021 | Incumbent | Democratic |
The United States Secretary of Transportation is the head of the United States Department of Transportation. The secretary serves as the principal advisor to the president of the United States on all matters relating to transportation. The secretary is a statutory member of the Cabinet of the United States, and is fourteenth in the presidential line of succession.
The United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by the U.S. Congress to foster and control the peacetime development of atomic science and technology. President Harry S. Truman signed the McMahon/Atomic Energy Act on August 1, 1946, transferring the control of atomic energy from military to civilian hands, effective on January 1, 1947. This shift gave the members of the AEC complete control of the plants, laboratories, equipment, and personnel assembled during the war to produce the atomic bomb.
The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and energy production, the research and development of nuclear power, the military's nuclear weapons program, nuclear reactor production for the United States Navy, energy-related research, and energy conservation.
Hazel Reid O'Leary is an American lawyer, politician and university administrator who served as the 7th United States secretary of energy from 1993 to 1997. A member of the Democratic Party, O'Leary was the first woman and first African American to hold that post. She also served as the 14th president of Fisk University from 2004 to 2013, a historically black college and her alma mater. O'Leary's tenure at Fisk came amid financial difficulty for the school, during which time she increased enrollment and contentiously used the school's art collection to raise funds.
Jennifer Mulhern Granholm is a Canadian-born American politician. Since 2021, she has served as the 16th United States Secretary of Energy. A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served as the Attorney General of Michigan from 1999 to 2003 and as the 47th Governor of Michigan from 2003 to 2011, as the first woman to hold each office.
James Rodney Schlesinger was an American economist and public servant who was best known for serving as Secretary of Defense from 1973 to 1975 under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Prior to becoming Secretary of Defense, he served as Chair of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) from 1971 to 1973, and as CIA Director for a few months in 1973. He became America's first Secretary of Energy under Jimmy Carter in 1977, serving until 1979.
A cabinet reshuffle or shuffle occurs when a head of government rotates or changes the composition of ministers in their cabinet, or when the head of state changes the head of government and a number of ministers. They are more common in parliamentary systems than in systems where cabinet heads must be confirmed by a separate legislative body, and occur frequently in autocratic systems.
Federico Fabian Peña is an American politician and attorney who served as the 12th United States secretary of transportation from 1993 to 1997 and the 8th United States secretary of energy from 1997 to 1998, during the presidency of Bill Clinton. He previously served as the 41st mayor of Denver from 1983 to 1991.
The United States was the first country to manufacture nuclear weapons and is the only country to have used them in combat, with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. Before and during the Cold War, it conducted 1,054 nuclear tests, and tested many long-range nuclear weapons delivery systems.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 is a United States federal law which established a comprehensive national program for the safe, permanent disposal of highly radioactive wastes.
The timeline of the Cox Report controversy is a chronology of information relating to the People's Republic of China's (PRC) nuclear espionage against the United States detailed in the Congressional Cox Report. The timeline also includes documented information relating to relevant investigations and reactions by the White House, the U.S. Congress, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and United States Department of Justice.
Since the discovery of ionizing radiation, a number of human radiation experiments have been performed to understand the effects of ionizing radiation and radioactive contamination on the human body, specifically with the element plutonium.
Dan William Reicher is an American lawyer who was U.S. Assistant Secretary of Energy for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in the Clinton Administration. Reicher is currently executive director of the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University, a joint center of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford Law School, where he also holds faculty positions. Reicher joined Stanford in 2011 from Google, where he served since 2007 as Director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives for the company's venture Google.org.
The Gore–Chernomyrdin Commission, or U.S.–Russian Joint Commission on Economic and Technological Cooperation, was a United States and Russian Joint Commission developed to increase cooperation between the two countries in several different areas. The Commission was developed by the United States’ President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin at a summit in Vancouver in April 1993. Al Gore, the United States Vice President, and Viktor Chernomyrdin, the Russian Prime Minister, were appointed as co-chairmen and the committee derives its name from those two individuals. Before his appointment to the Commission, Chernomyrdin oversaw the Soviet national oil industry as minister from 1985–1989. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Chernomyrdin organized the Soviet oil industry into the Gazprom corporation.
Ernest Jeffrey Moniz, GCIH is an American nuclear physicist and former government official. From May 2013 to January 2017, he served as the 13th United States secretary of energy in the Obama administration. Prior to this, Moniz served as associate director for science in the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President of the United States from 1995 to 1997 and undersecretary of energy from 1997 to 2001 during the Clinton administration. He is currently the co-chair and CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), as well as president and CEO of the Energy Futures Initiative (EFI), a nonprofit organization working on climate and energy technology issues, which he co-founded in 2017.
Warren Fletcher "Pete" Miller Jr. is an American nuclear engineer known for his work in the areas of computational physics, radioactive waste management, transport theory, nuclear reactor design and analysis, and the management of nuclear research and development programs.
Harold Palmer Smith Jr. is an American professor, consultant, and expert on defense policy. He was Assistant to the Secretary of Defense from June 1993 to March 1996, when the name of the position changed to Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical & Biological Defense Programs, and remained in the position until January 1998.
Lisa E. Gordon-Hagerty is an American scientist and former government official who served as the under secretary of energy for nuclear security and administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration. Earlier in her career, she had served in various other leadership positions in the Department of Energy and the National Security Council.