'We can pass this green bill'

Steven Chu, the Nobel prize-winning physicist, is fast discovering that science is not enough when it comes to winning the climate change debate in Washington.

A year after President Barack Obama appointed the mild-mannered Stanford academic as energy secretary, Mr Chu is struggling to convince an increasingly partisan Congress that the US cannot afford to delay far-reaching reforms, from nuclear policy to reducing carbon emissions.

"We're in a crazy never-never land situation," he said, describing how companies were not making investments and banks were not supplying loans because of the uncertainty about when, or whether, a cap on carbon would be imposed. "Let's recognise that we're postponing an inevitability."

Equally important, the US runs the risk of falling behind China which is investing more than $100bn in alternative energy, reducing its dependence on inefficient coal plants.

"They [the Chinese] missed the first industrial revolution. They missed in large part the computer and biotech revolutions. They don't want to miss this one," he said. "That is something I think the United States and other countries should sit up and take notice of."

Mr Chu was speaking in his Washington office, overlooking the Capitol, where climate change legislation has become bogged down in Congress.

Mr Obama has been pushing for a new law that would impose limits on US carbon emissions and set up a trading scheme through which large polluters would have to buy permits to emit more.

The legislation is part of his campaign pledge to make the US a more responsible global citizen by cutting emissions, while creating high-tech jobs.

The House passed a version of a climate change bill last summer, but the Senate has been dragging its heels.

Now, with job creation and healthcare reform taking priority and with Democrats losing their "super-majority" in the Senate, climate change has further slipped down the agenda and few politicians or pundits expect the bill to be passed this year.

The process has been further hamstrung by the lack of consensus at the Copenhagen summit in December, and by recent disputes over climate science findings.

The most damaging has been the "Climategate" incident in which scientists from East Anglia University in the UK were accused of burying evidence that did not support their claims about global warming.

But Mr Chu said there was no cause for equivocation. "The public polls go up and down, with Climategate and all these other things. But if you step back and dispassionately look at it, this is a little wart on the overall amount of information." The administration remained committed to passing a comprehensive energy and cap-and-trade bill, he said. "I'm here because I think we can do this."

This week, Mr Obama made a new push on green energy, saying the government would guarantee $8.3bn in loans for two nuclear reactors to be built in the US state of Georgia, the first to be built since the 1979 Three Mile Island meltdown.

Mr Chu notes that China already has 21 reactors under construction, and sees this sector as a growth industry.

Nuclear power should be an issue on which the Obama administration can gain cross-party support, given that Republicans have called for 100 reactors to be built.

"I think there are half a dozen to a dozen [Republicans] who understand the international context and they certainly know about the climate threat and are very concerned about that," said Mr Chu. "In my heart of hearts, this is a non-partisan issue."

But increasingly partisan bickering in Washington has made climate change a political rather than economic or security issue. Many Republicans who agree with Mr Chu's warnings are no longer saying so publicly.

The energy secretary singled out for praise Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina who is actively promoting climate change legislation, saying that he had taken "a very brave stand".

But Mr Chu may well find that pushing through climate change and clean energy legislation will make winning a Nobel prize seem easy.

Read the full interview online at www.ft.com/chu