Energy secretary: I’ll stay ‘as long as the president will have me’

Energy Secretary Steven Chu says he’s not eyeing the exits.

The Energy Department is facing tougher political headwinds as Republicans take over the House vowing to slash spending and attack the White House’s green agenda.

But Chu — whose department has seen several high-level departures in recent months — said in an interview broadcast Sunday that he plans to serve “as long as the president will have me.”

“I came here to do a number of things because I believed in what the President believes in terms of energy and the environment,” Chu said on Platts Energy Week. Chu added he plans to stay “as long as I think I’m doing good things, as long as I see progress.”

Chu, in the wide-ranging interview, said he’s hopeful about finding common ground with Republicans on issues including energy efficiency retrofits of homes and buildings.

In recent days Chu has begun signaling areas where the administration could work with Republicans now that climate change legislation has collapsed on Capitol Hill.

“Look for the things we agree on, look for the common ground, look for the things that the vast majority of Americans will say ‘this is good for me, this is good for America, this is good for my state’ and move forward on those issues,” Chu said of his strategy for working with Congress.

Last week he made waves by endorsing the notion of a “clean energy” standard for utilities, rather than a narrower renewable electricity standard that is favored by many Democrats.

Chu also used the interview to defend Energy Department initiatives, such as the Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy. The program is aimed to cultivating high-risk, high-reward research into technologies that curb reliance on foreign energy and lower greenhouse-gas emissions.

Chu also defended his agency’s performance in handling the tens of billions of dollars for energy efficiency and clean energy programs in the 2009 stimulus law, which has come under GOP attack. “I think the Department of Energy did very well,” he said.

Elsewhere, he said, the evidence of human-induced climate change is only getting stronger. “As climate science advances each year, despite rumors to the contrary, the evidence is getting more and more compelling, especially some of the more recent satellite data,” Chu said, calling the case “overwhelming.”

Chu was also deeply involved in the administration response to the BP oil spill. He defended federal estimates of the amount of oil BP dumped into the Gulf of Mexico amid signs that BP — which has billions of dollars in fines at stake — will allege that the federal figures are too high.

“We calculated this in many, many different ways,” Chu said of the various analyses of pressure data and other factors.