Video Player

America's Leadership in Clean Energy

Barack Obama: October 23, 2009; Running Time: 28:38

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

In welcoming President Obama, MIT President
Susan Hockfield summarizes the vast array of energy innovation at MIT, including the MIT Energy Initiative and the student-led 1700 member Energy Club, and declares, "We share President Obama's view that clean energy is the defining challenge of this era."

In his introduction of President Obama, Professor Ernest Moniz, Director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) and member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), discusses global issues on clean energy, science and innovation, and credits Obama for expanding the nation's energy vision.

Barack Obama came to MIT not just to praise the Institute's leading edge energy research but to encourage all of America’s “heirs to a legacy of innovation” in their pursuit of discovery. The nation owes much of its prosperity to risk-takers and entrepreneurs, Obama said, and now, given the linked challenges of energy and climate change, we need such pioneers more than ever.

After visiting MIT labs working on more efficient solar cells and lighting, batteries “that aren’t built, but grown,” and offshore wind plants that function even when the air is still, Obama told a large crowd that as the nation inevitably transitions from fossil fuels to renewable energy, we’re counting on the kind of “innovative potential on display at MIT.”

Obama acknowledges the great challenges facing energy researchers and entrepreneurs. As traditional energy supplies become more precious, and energy demands grow, nations are competing to develop new ways to produce and use energy, said Obama, and the winner will lead the global economy. “I want America to be that nation. It’s that simple.”

His administration’s response has been to make massive investments in both clean energy and basic science. Obama aims these efforts at both the current recession, and the nation’s future economic health. Clean energy jobs today and research “to produce the technologies of tomorrow” will “lay a new foundation for lasting prosperity.” He hopes this comprehensive approach will culminate in legislation that will transform America’s entire energy system.

But Obama is under no delusion that all will embrace his plan. “The closer we get,” says Obama, the “more we’ll hear from those whose interest or ideology run counter to that much-needed action we’re engaged in.” What worries the president more, though, is a dangerous pessimism shared by many, “that our politics are too broken and our people too unwilling to make hard choices for us to actually deal with this energy issue.” Implicit in this argument, he says, is that America has lost its fighting spirit.

Obama rejects this argument “because of what I’ve seen here at MIT … and because of what we know we are capable of achieving when called upon ….” The nation that harnessed electricity and the atom is one that has always sought out new frontiers, “and this generation is no different.” Obama invokes the achievements of the past as a call to arms “in what is sure to be a difficult fight in the months and years ahead” -- to ensure that “we are the energy leader that we need to be.”

Lecture Details

Location: Kresge Auditorium

“Today's frontiers can't be found on a map. They're being explored in our classrooms and our laboratories, in our start-ups and our factories. And today's pioneers are not traveling to some far flung place. These pioneers are all around us -- the entrepreneurs and the inventors, the researchers, the engineers -- helping to lead us into the future, just as they have in the past. This is the nation that has led the world for two centuries in the pursuit of discovery. This is the nation that will lead the clean energy economy of tomorrow, so long as all of us remember what we have achieved in the past and we use that to inspire us to achieve even more in the future.”

President Barack Obama

About the Speaker

Barack Obama

President of the United States
2009 Nobel Peace Laureate

Barack Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961. He earned his undergraduate degree from Columbia University, then moved to Chicago, where he worked with church groups to help communities hit by hard times. He then attended Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Harvard Law Review, and returned to Chicago, where he helped lead voter registration drives. From 1992 to 2004, Obama served as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School.

Obama served three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. While there, he passed major ethics reform legislation, cut taxes for working families, and expanded health care for children and their parents. Obama successfully ran for United States Senate in 2004. While a senator, he focused on legislation to reform lobbying, to set controls on conventional weapons, and to bring transparency to government by bringing federal spending online. He began his run for the presidency in February 2007 and was elected the 44th President of the United States in November 2008. On October 9, 2009, Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, for his efforts to promote a nuclear-weapon free world.