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

person in technology, technology innovation, how technology applies to oil and to our lives in general going forward. there will be a lot of interesting things about oil supply at a time when it is very politically charged and about technology and how it has taken over and shape 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. at exelon, we are acting. by 2020, we are committed to reducing, offsetting, or displacing more than 15 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually from greening our operations, helping customers and communities reduce emissions, and offering more low carbon electricity in the marketplace. at exelon, we are taking action and we are seeing results. >> "white house chronicle" is

produced in collaboration with whut, howard university television. now, your program host, nationally syndicated columnist llewellyn king, and co-host linda gasparello. captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org-- >> hello again, and thank you for coming along. i promise two exceptional minds. 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 oil data and now is with the center for strategic and international studies. and one of the more dynamic people in washington government, robert atkinson, who heads the information technology and

innovation foundation. i want to begin by looking at this problem of what people say about oil. seeing very high oil prices. $5 for gasoline in many places. and suddenly politicians are saying, there is plenty of oil, it is all the government's fault we do not have it. guy caruso, is there plenty of oil? >> potentially, yes, but it is not that simple. there is a lot of up-front investment required. there is adoption of new technology, innovating with that technology. >> talking about new technology with oil -- oil is in the ground. what is this new technology? >> two things. one, the seismic work that benefits from all of the gains we have made in the i.t. world. >> information technology, finding the oil, mapping the

ground. >> secondly, the latest adaption of technology that has been around a long time is drilling techniques, going from a vertical for -- to much more use of horizontal -- exactly. >> how many directions in one? >> as much as 8. >> what is fracking? >> hydro fracking is the ability to increase the channels for that oil or natural gas to flow into production. >> it is cracking a rock and pushing something in to get something out. >> a rock like people like hubbard would have never imagined -- >> he was the first man who said we might run out of oil that people took seriously.

>> robert, your organization, tell us about it. >> it is a think tank in washington and we focus on how we get the right policies, both in the united states and around the world, to maximize innovation. >> is innovation a matter of policy? isn't it a matter of extraordinary individuals? >> absolutely not. it is both. >> it is not a matter of bessemer or edison -- >> look at steve jobs. could he have invented the iphone, the i fad -- the ipad, excuse me, the ipod, the music system, unless there was an answer that -- internet? >> wasn't he driving it? >> yes, he was, but there was a platform he could ride upon. one of them was the internet and one of them was the microprocessor. both supported by the u.s.

government. >> suggesting the government invented an awful lot of things we enjoy today, especially the internet. >> and also horizontal drilling. >> i know. we live in a time where -- when there are politicians saying that the government out of it. whereas, in fact, most, if not all, but most things -- these critical things zero more to the government than any particular corporation. >> more of a partnership. not the government taking over. the government playing an enabling role to get these technologies ready. >> what do you feel about the future of energy? >> look, the future of energy has to being we have to go to non-fossil fuel energy base. it is inevitable. it will have to happen. for no other reason than you have countries like china and brazil will expand their

demands. we've got to get to a clean energy in economy. we can do it. but the only way to do it is innovation. >> name some of the technologies? >> the people doing the best work right now i think is in -- modeled after darpa -- advanced research project agency. new photosynthesis technology -- when the sun goes down and it's a plan, 1% energy conversion. -- when the sun go down and hits a plant. you transform biofuels and agriculture. it is a science problem. it can probably be solved the we have to put money behind it and funded the best scientists and researchers. >> notwithstanding what bob says, we will rely on oil for quite a long time. when you were explaining the oil situation, it seems you told me

about two different things. one technology, down the hall, cracking rocks, the other in beating the earth into -- and the sophistic 3 d seismic finding of oil with satellites. what other technologies come into this? it is not a douser with a stick anymore. >> it is the kind of technological innovations that robert was talking about. interpreting the data coming in and actually how do you actually bring your costs down. we have known about horizontal drilling and hydro fracking for decades. >> i remember. >> so it has only been probably the early part of last decade, early part of 2000, 2001, 2002, that we have really seen it

become commercial. it is not only the technology but adapting its to the circumstances, in this case, and the united states. we have been the leader in this. it is the ingenuity and the ability to take lists, willingness to take risks. and you tend to find it in the smaller firms will basically go all in on a particular project. that is what happened with shale gas in the barnett region of texas, which is what really turned the corner in making known technology, adapting it, and bringing the cost down to where at the time was profitable. >> do you see some technology coming out of the government that will further refine this, or technology out of corporations that will further

refine the oil business? >> i think it is less likely to come out of government, because the funding that rob talked about that is definitely needed on the clean energy side has basically dried up on oil and gas. the horizontal drilling, r&d that was done -- that doe lab does not exist anymore and funding has essentially dried up. and the 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 is unfortunate that it has become this polarization. when i think, as the president has said most recently, we need it all, and what needs to be

recognized is the time scale. you cannot do this in a political election time frame. we are talking about decades. and many of the things that have happened, in all of the forms of energy, are decades. >> csis is a think tank. what do you do there that promotes energy innovation, technology, or simply data? >> i think the most and horten role is to raise the level of the debates about energy and to try to put all the facts on the table and bring everyone who has a view about a particular hit energy issue to the table and to invite policymakers and staff members to our meetings and just talk about some of the things we are talking about right now.

>> is it a think tank? >> it is a think tank. >> it is thanks? -- doesn't think? in what i mean. not all of the think tank things. some are totally polemic. do you change your mind -- is saying our analysis does not bear this out and we will bactra. >> as keynes said, when the facts change, i change my mind. what do you do? we do try to do that. one of the things we focused on his whole notion of clean energy innovation. initially we had this view that we were a little bit farther along than perhaps we might have been. as we look into the data and

stated the technology, it argues a little different. we are further away than a lot of people in washington think. these technologies are not really ready for prime time. the goal is to get the technologies cheaper than oil in a subsidized way, and we are not there yet. we have to think of another way. >> how are you funded? >> in a variety of sources, foundations, individuals. we occasionally will receive government grants for work they want us to do and also companies like our position or that our views, approach. >> 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? >> a couple of things. probably the leading advocates in washington for the expansion of what we call the research and development tax credit. we were quite active a few years ago. pointing out that we need to lead the world -- we had the

best r&d tax credit in the world in the 1990's and now we are 27 in the world. >> who is leading now? >> it is a little unclear. we are doing and little -- new study. perhaps it is india. deliver not. leader last year. the highest tax credit in the world, six times more generous than the american credit. incredible. >> you think of france being stuck in place. a moment for station identification. particularly for listeners of sirius xm radio, you are listening to "white house chronicle" from washington, with me, llewellyn king guy caruso, center for strategic studies, and robert atkinson, center for and to -- and renovation technology foundation. innovation fascinates me but it is often happenstance rural -- happenstantial, but has not

been in energy as and other areas. >> i think it has been slow and steady in energy. i think government -- r&d, for example, has been very -- has a robust industry. when energy is hot, a lot of money is thrown at it. the first president who advocated -- one of the first presidents who advocated strong r&d program was richard nixon. then the prices came back down and it was hard to get funding. so, companies have continued but at a rather slow but steady pace. >> where do the national laboratories fit in? they are controlled by the department of energy and they do very interesting things but i am never sure.

i spend a lot of time visiting them. i am never sure how much they affect the market place. >> i think they are very useful and effective in their work. however, the origins were largely related to nuclear and nuclear weapons. >> in the 1970's, they were deeply involved in solar power. >> you look at the national renewable energy laboratory -- there is pretty clear evidence their research helped drive the current state of wind technology in the united states. prices have come down dramatically. right now, cheaper than peak production of the times -- when you are using peak energy often turbines and gas. that was innovation that will certainly help to buy them. and then taken by the private sector. that is the model that works. you have the public sector-type

lab or university with government support. they get the technology up to a certain point and then they handed off to rest 18 -- risk- taking innovators to put in in the marketplace. >> there have been contenders for the republican nomination for president who wanted to wipe out a year department of energy, stop all of the government r&d and is believed that suddenly it will be done by companies. but is all of this a misunderstanding of how corporations work? corporations are looking for profit. they are not looking primarily for innovation. if they are forced into innovation they can make a lot of money. i talked about they happenstantial and a lot of the big things in internet related have been happenstan tial. the largest example is probably the social networks. no one conceived that except

individuals who did it. now the world maybe has three enormous companies. they certainly were built on technology developed by the government and privatized. but they were built on the brain power of young people taking different routes. and you cannot -- can you incubate that? in a couple of things. certainly facebook, zuckerberg was up in harvard and did it on his own but look at other important technology. netscape, the first internet browser, it was developed at the university of illinois working from a research grant. google, working at stanford on a national science foundation grant -- grants. again, those are two great entrepreneurs. they took the technology and build great companies. but that core technology would not have been there without the federal government. so i think the notion somehow --

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

losers. you will obviously have certain politicians who will be -- one technology over another. that is where i think government r&d should be kept as apolotical as possible. i understand in this town it is heretical. >> not contained in this town. >> let me push back a little bit. i think this is often a complaint we hear, particularly from those worried about government waste. but you look at many of the major technology funded programs in the government and they are anything but political. darpa in the defense department, it is not a politicized agency. if you look at the people now in rpe, incredible group of people. ph.d. scientists from the best universities to come there for three years, give up what they are doing and devoting their time to totally peer-reviewed

process. nista the same way. national science foundation. >> as a reporter who has covered these issues for more than 40 years, the pull liberalization -- politicization seems very clear. each president -- i know where the money is going to go, depending on the party, from day one. in know who is going to get the jobs and how those people think it will affect policies, ergo, money down the road. you know in advance. you do not have to be in washington there long to know where the pressure against the keystone pipeline came from. national resources defense council has an apoplectic about it. i don't know why. they have very good mines there. they have not made some much

fuss about anything other than -- alar apples. >> we have to do it more energy research into oil. there are a lot of opportunities. and there is clean energy. at the idea we have to pick one versus the other, we have to do both. >> i think rabin is actually write that places like darpa and nist are success stories. >> can we do a few without acronyms. advanced research projects agency, advanced research private agency for energy -- >> national renault and agee lab and the national and said to each for standards and technology -- national renewable energy lab, and the national institute for standards and technology. the point about the politicization is, there has not been a steady, commited government funding.

so it has been very much and up and down. i think if we had done -- believe it not, what richard nixon had recommended in 1973, which was fund a very strong r&d program in energy. >> i wrote the executive summary of that study. i knew what that said. it is interesting, in some ways, it was very right. it was a very short study. followed a much later by an enormous thing called project independence. i think the only thing you could do with the project independence steady to boil it to make some steam. we looked at things. we did not know there was much natural gas. we were not sure about oil. we were very confident in nuclear -- may be overconfident. and we wanted to electrify everything. and we wanted to do everything we could do to coal -- liquefy it, burn it directly. it has not worked that way

particularly. except, electricity is coming along much later. but we are on the verge of the electric car. you are not so sure? >> i am not. then i think we're on the verge. i will tell you what. -- >> i think we are on the verge. i would tell you. an electric car with the power plant on board. if we put the plant off board, we have a totally reliable electric car. that is the avolition. >> again, going back to the department energy -- they have a program called batteries for elektra's -- electrification -- something like that. we have to get a much better battery. they are working on all sorts of strange technologies. >> talking about acronyms. how did they do this? the acronym first? >> the acronym first. >> unless it has a connotation

-- >> we have been very light on the government -- actually generous towards it. but you deal with about 15 of 14 people, enormous output. my computer is constantly advising of new studies and initiatives and things that you do. likewise, you do almost limited number of programs. but by comparison, with very few people, these government entities produce at least the amount of energy in terms of debate. the government produces very little and take a lot of people to do with it. >> i think there may be certainly a larger overhead in a big government bureaucracy then 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 that the energy information administration. so much stuff, good work being done, but not getting out there. i think now the internet has been a big part of getting that out. so, having the best thing -- certainly we need to improve efficiency. but we can also do a better job of communicating what is being done in some of the programs that rob mention in r&d, and in my case, eia. >> there are a lot of programs that work very well and a lot that do not. at the end of the day we have to embrace fundamental civil service reform. you have to be the to fire people. they can't do that. there is dead wood in a lot of places. it until you can get rid of these people and bring in better people, it will be hard. >> it has been a bugaboo. the government develops -- i once told a director, or told

several times, at the national labs, that if they fired their best people, technology transfer is taken care of. somebody said, i wish you would stop saying that. just being right is not enough. the government has its own peculiar set of problems. and that as our program for today. i am so grateful to have had died, and so of csis robert atkinson from technology -- information technology and innovation foundation. new technology is coming. meanwhile, enjoy your lives we will be back next week with a fresh program.

>> many have spoken out on the need to transition to a clean energy future. at exelon, 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 emissions, and offering more low carbon electricity in the marketplace. at exelon, 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 can be seen on pbs stations and cable access channels. to view the program online, visit us at whchronicle.com.