>> hello, i'm llewellyn king. the host of "white house chronicle," which is coming right up. and today we have a very special, remarkable program because i am introducing two of the great experts. one in the world supply of oil. not the theories of it, but the actual supply. the other one a leading person

in technology, technology invasion. how technology aplease to oil and to our lives in general going forward. there will be a lot of interesting things about oil supplies at a time where it's very politically charged and about technology and how it has taken over and shaped our lives. we will be right back with our technology special. >> many have spoken out on the need to transition to a clean energy future. we are acting. by 2020, we are committed to reducing, offsetting or displacing more than 15 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually through greening our operations, helping our customers and communities reduce their commissions and offering more low carbon electricity in the market place. we are taking action and seeing results.

>> "white house chronicle" is produced in collaboration with whut, howard university television. and now, your program host, nationally syndicated columnist llewellyn king and co-host linda gasparello. >> hello again and thank you for coming along. i promised you two exceptional minds and i'm very glad to bring them to you. guy caruso, who used to be head of the energy information administration, a separate, isolated but very important part of the department of energy that keeps track of real data. and now is for the center of strategic and international studies. and one of the more dynamic people in the washington area, robert atkinson, who heads the information technology and

invasion foundation. i want to begin by looking at this problem of what people say about oil. we're seeing very high oil prices, five dollars for gasoline at many places. and suddenly politicians are saying oh, there's plenty of oil. all the government's fault that we don't have it. guy caruso, expert on this, is there plenty of oil? >> potentially yes, but it's not that simple. there is a lot of up front investment required. there's an dappings of new technology irks innovating with that technology. >> when we talk about new technology and oil, oil is in the ground. what is this new technology? >> well, i think there's two things. one, the seismic work which benefits from all the enormous gains we've made in the i.t. world. other major -- >> this is the information technology finding the oil? >> exactly.

>> mapping the ground. >> mapping the ground. and secondly, the other latest dappings of technology that has been around a long time is drilling techniques going from vertical to much more use of horizonal which mes more of the -- >> down like that and up like that. >> exactly. >> how many directions? one well? >> i've seen them in one place. and then there's the frakking. what is that? >> that's ability to increase the channels for oil to flow into a production. >> so it's cracking the lock? >> exactly. >> pushing something in to push something out of the rock. >> the push in a rock that m.

hubbard saw. >> we focus on how do we get the right policies both in the united states and around the world, and maximize invasion. >> is invasion a matter of policy? isn't it a matter of extraordinary individuals? >> absolutely not. it's both. absolutely a matter of policy. >> not a matter of jobs or gates? >> look at steve jobs, for example, could he have invented the iphone? the ipad, excuse me, the i pod? the music system unless there was an internet? >> but wasn't he driving that invention? >> he certainly was. but there was a set of platforms that he could ride upon and those platforms, one of them being the internet. one of them being the microprocessor. both of those core technologies were fundamentally supported by the u.s. government.

>> the government invented an awful lot of things that we enjoy today. >> absolutely. >> especially the internet. >> and also the drilling. >> i know. we live in a time when there are politicians saying the companies will do it, get the government out of it, get the government out of it. well as most, if not all or most or many critical things, including the jet airliner owes more to the government than any particular corporation. >> absolutely. so really a partnership. the government plays a critical, enabling role to get these technologies ready for entrepreneurs. >> what do you feel about the future of energy? >> for no other reason, we've got countries like china and brazil that will expand their

fossil fuel supply, so we've got to get to a clean energy economy. the only way to do that is invasion. >> name some of the technologies? >> well, the people doing the best work in that right now is in what's called arpa e, which is modeled after darpa. advanced research products/energy. their funding, for example, new photo sin thesis. it takes 1% of that sunlight. if you can double it to two, you've transformed bio fulls and made it much more efficient. that's a science problem and could probably be solved. >> we're going to rely on oil for quite a long time. when you were explaining the oil situation and new technology, it

seemed to me you told me about two differing things. one group technology down the hall, cracking rocks. brute technology, beating the earth into submission if you will. and the very sophisticated 3-d seismic finding the oil with satellites, and what are the other technologies that come into this new world of oil exploration? not a douser with a stick any more. >> no. i think it's the kind of technological invasions that rob was talking about. in sbrpting the data in actually how do you actually bring your cost down. we've known about horizontal drilling and hide yofrakking for decades. so it's only been the early part of last decade. that we saw that becoming

commercial. not only the technology, but it's adapting it to circumstances in this case, the united states. we've been the leaders in this. the ability to take risk, willingness to take risk. and that you tend to find that in the smaller firms. you know, who basically go all in on a particular project. and that's what happens with shell gas in the barnett region of texas which was what really turned the corner in taking known technology, adapting it, and bringing the cost down to where at the time it was profitable. >> and, do you see some technology coming out of the government that's doing to further refine this? or technology coming out of

corporations that's going to further refine the oil business? >> i think it's less likely to come out of government because the funding that rob talked about is definitely needed on the clean energy side has basically dried up on oil and gas. the horizontal drilling, that was done in bartlesville in one of the labs. that labs doesn't exist any more and funding has essentially dried up. there's this political debate now that anything we do to foster fossil energy is going to slow down this transformation to clean energy, sources that rob talked about. so it's unfortunate that it's become this polarization where the president has said, i think,

we need it all. what needs to be recognized is the time scale. we can't do this in a political elections time frame. we're talking about decades, and many of the things that have happened in all of the forms of energy -- >> so it's a think tank. what's it role in energy. what do you do there that promotes energy, invasion technology, or simply data? >> i think the most important role is to raise the level of the debate about energy and to try to put all the facts on the table and bring every one who has a view to invite them to our meetings and just talk about some of the things we're talking about right now.

>> rob, how do you describe your foundation? is it a think tank? >> it is a think tank. >> and it thinks? >> we think. >> because not all think tanks think. you know what i mean. >> right. >> do you ever change your minds when you're thinking to think that this is the way to go and one day you say our analysis isn't getting out the way, we're going to back track? >> sir when facts change, i change i mind, what do you do? we do try to do that. i'll give you a couple of examples. so one of the things that we've focused on is this whole notion of clean energy invasion. and initially we had this view that we were a little bit farther along than perhaps we might have been. if we looked into the data and the state of technology our

views are a little bit different now in terms we're farther away than i think a lot of people in washington think we are. these technologies aren't really ready for prime time. the goal is here, and to get these technologies cheaper than oil in an up subsidized way. so we have to think of a whole new way of doing it. >> how are you funded? >> a variety of sources, foundations, individuals. we occasionally will receive government grants for contract, for work they want to do and companies who like our positions. >> do you have any great successes you can point to? can you point to something and say we did that? or that is happening because of us? >> well, we were quite -- we're probably the leading advocates in washington for expansion of the research and development tax credit, the r & d tax credit. we were quite active on that a few years ago, pointing out we

used to lead the world. we had the best tax credit in the world in the 1990's. now we're 27th in the world. >> who's leading now? >> it's a little unclear. we're doing a new study, perhaps it's india, believe it or not. but france was certainly the leader last year. they put in the highest tax credit in the world last year. six times more generous than the american credit. >> that's incredible. >> it is incredible. >> because we think of france being stuck in place. moment for station identification, particularly for our listeners on sirius x.m. radio, you're listening to "white house chronicle" from washington, d.c. with myself, llewellyn king, guy caruso and robert atkinson. invasion fascinates me, but it's often happenstance.

it hasn't been here as it has in other areas. >> well, i think it's been slow but steady in energy. and i think government are, indeed for example, has been very boom and bust, has a boom and bust history. when energy is hot, a lot of money is thrown at it. and you know, the first has presidents who advocated a strong program was richard nixon. then, prices came back down, and it was hard to get fundings. so the energy companies have continued, but at a rather slow but steady pace. >> where do the national laboratories fit into this? they are controlled by the department of energy and they do very interesting things, but i'm

never sure and i spent a lot of time visiting, i'm never sure how much they effect the market place. >> well, i think they've been very useful and effective in their work. however, their origins were largely related to nuclear and nuclear weapons. >> but in 1970's, they were deeply involved in solar power. >> well, look at the national energy renewal laboratory in colorado. there's pretty clear evidence that it helped drive the current state of wind technology in the u.s. wind prices have come down dramatically. and right now are cheaper, getting peak production time, when you're using peak energy, you're using gas and wind can compete. that was certainly invasion that was helped. then taken by the private sector. that's the model that works. you've had the public sector

through a lab or a university with government support. they get the technology up to a certain point and then handed off to risk taking innovators who then put it into the market place. >> there have been, maybe i should say, have been contenders for the republican nomination for president who wanted to wipeout the department of energy, stop all government r & d and the belief that it will suddenly be done by companies. isn't this actually a misunderstanding of how corporations work? corporations are looking for profit, they're not looking primarily for invasion. if they're forced into invasion they can make a lot of money. but i talked about the happenstance and a lot of the big things in nuclear related, internet related have been happenstance from, you think about for example -- the social networks. nobody conceived that except the individuals who did it.

and now the world has three enormous companies that they certainly were built on technology developed by the government. but they were built on the brain power of young people taking different routes. you can't hothouse can it? can you incubate that. >> zuckerberg up in harvard did it on his own. but look at like netscape, the first internet browser. that was developed by someone from the university of illinois working on a federal research grant from the national science foundation. google, sergei was working at stanford on a national science grant on research. now again, those are two great entrepreneurs. they took that technology and built great companies. but again, that core technology wouldn't have been there without the federal government. so i think this notion somehow.

i'll tell you who actually is very supportive of this, that's newt gingrich. newt gingrich has always stood out on the republican side saying we need more federal research support because he understands. >> but you touched on it and that is the political zation of research. if you're a good, god-fearing left or center person you want the research in solar wind, alternatives. if you're a good, god-fearing right of center you want it in fossil, refining. so there's a political divide. on a natural divide, but it's there. certain set of technologies are loved by the left and other sets of technologies are loved by the right. and this causes a whiplash effect in government r & d. is there a solution to this? >> i think the real conflict has been, at least politically, it's been over this issue of giving government somehow authority to

pick the winners and losers and then you're obviously going to have certain politicians that are going to be supporting one technology versus another. and that's where i think government, r & dmp, should be kept as apolitical as possible. i realize in this town it's -- >> it's not a standard. >> yeah, i think this is often times the complaint we hear, particularly from people worried about government waste. you look at many of the major technology funding programs and they're anything but political. darpa is a great example. you look at the people who are now in aarpa e and they are an incredible group of people. they come here for three years, give up what they're doing, coming from companies, and devoting their time to a totally

peer reviewed process. so nist is the same way, they have a technology program. i think the politicalization program has been overblown. >> i'm telling you as a reporter who's covered these issues for more than 40 years, it seems very clear. each president, i know where the money is going to go depending on the party from the day one. you know who's going to get the jobs and how that group of people will think it will affect policy down the road. you know in advance. you don't have to be in washington very long to know where the pressure, like where the pipeline came from. i mean the national resources defense counsel has been up in arms about it. i don't know why. they've got such great minds.

they haven't worried about such things since apples. >> it seems to me we've got to do more energy research in oil. there's a lot of opportunity and we've got to do in it clean energy. the idea we're going to pick one over the other, we need to do both. >> could i? i think rob's actually right, places like aarpa and darpa are success stories. >> just spell them owl out. the advance research projects agency. the advance research project agency for energy. >> and then the national institutes of standards and technology. i don't think the personnel or leadership of those is political. the point is there's not been a steady, committed government

funding. so it's been very much an up and down. i think if we had done what, believe it or not what richard nixon had recommended in 1973, which was fund the very strong r & d energy program -- >> guy, i wrote the executive summary of that study. actually it's interesting, in some ways it was very right. a very short study followed much later by project independence. i think the only thing you could do was that study was to boil it the make some steam, to burn it to make some steam. but basically we looked at things we didn't know there was much natural gas. we weren't sure about oil, we were very confident in nuclear, maybe overconfident in nuclear and we wanted to electrify everything. and we wanted to do everything we could coal.

and it hasn't worked out that way. energy coming on as transportation much later. we are on the verge of the electric car. you're not so sure? >> i'm not, no. >> i'll tell you why i think we are on the verge. because with the hybrid we have an electric car with a power plant onboard. where ever we can put it offboard, then we have a totally reliable electric car. so that's the evolution that's needed. >> again, going back to aarpa e, they have a program called beast, which i can't remember what it stands for. we've got to get a much better battery. so they're working on all sorts of -- the strange technology -- >> talking about these acronyms. how do they do that? get the acronym first? >> we're good attack ro anymores. >> also it has a connotation --

>> we've been very light on the government here. actually generous towards it. but you deal with about 15 people, 14 people or something, an enormous output. my computer is constantly advising me of new studies, new initiatives that you do. you do almost a limitless number of programs. but comparison, with very few people, these non-government enities produce at least a lot of energy in terms of the debate. government produces very little and takes a lot of people to do it. anything it does takes a lot of people. can we ever solve that? >> well, i think maybe there's certainly a larger overhead. in a big government bureaucracy than there are in either one of our programs. but i think the key is

communicating what is being done better. we found that to be true with the energy information administration. with so much stuff, good work being done but it wasn't really getting out there. i think now internets been a big part of getting that out. i think the best thing we certainly need to improve efficiency. but also do a better jb of communicating what ising with -- but we also do a better job of communicating what is being used in the programs, r & d and in my case the e.i.a. >> i think there are a lot of places that work well in government and a lot of places that don't. at the end of the day we have to be able to just fire people. and they can't do that, so there's dead wood in a lot of places. until you can get rid of those people and bring in better people, it's going to be hard to make it work. >> technology transfer has been a bugaboo. i once told the director, or

told them several times when i was giving lectures at the national labs that if they fired their best people technology transfer would be taken care of. one of the directors said to me i wish you would stop saying that! just being right is not enough! the government has its own peculiar set of problems. that is our program for today. we're so great to have you on this broadcast, guy caruso and robert atkinson. there's new technology coming! meanwhile, enjoy your lives. we'll be back next week with a fresh program. cheers!

>> many have spoken out on the need to transition to a clean energy future. we are acting. by 20 20 we are committed to reducing offsetting or displacing more than 15 million metric tons through greening our operations, helping our customers and communities reduce their emissions and offering more low carbon electricity in the market place. we are taking action and we are seeing results. >> "white house chronicle" is produced in collaboration with whut, howard university television. from washington, d.c., this has been "white house chronicle." a weekly analysis of the news with insight and a sense of humor featuring llewellyn king,

linda gasparello and guests. this program may be seen on pbs station and cable access channel. to view the program online, visit us at