Ernest Moniz was sworn in as Secretary of Energy, less than a week after the Senate unanimously confirmed President Obama’s nomination of the former Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist.
Moniz replaced Steven Chu at the Department of Energy, who had served since 2009 as head of DOE, which oversees the federal government’s energy-related policies and programs.
“I look forward to the progress we will make together in the coming years — advancing the president’s all-of-the-above energy strategy, maintaining the nuclear deterrent and reducing the nuclear danger, promoting American leadership in science and clean energy technology innovation, and cleaning up the legacy of the Cold War,” Moniz said in a statement following his swearing-in ceremony Tuesday.
Moniz, who was the undersecretary of energy from 1997 to 2001, was an early supporter of wider use of natural gas in the United States.
He led a 2011 MIT study that concluded natural gas’ ample domestic supply and low cost compared with diesel presented an opportunity to decrease dependence on foreign oil. Diesel has been the main fuel for the trucking industry for decades, but fleets are increasingly switching to natural gas.
