Sustainability Initiative Co-Chair Addresses Washington Post Energy Conference

WASHINGTON—Today Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute president and Energy Security, Innovation & Sustainability initiative co-chair, Shirley Ann Jackson, delivered the keynote address at the Washington Post Company Energy Conference. Jackson continued her call for a comprehensive energy roadmap to meet the demand for global energy security.

“Global energy security is the greatest challenge of our time, inextricably interlinked with our economic and national security,” Jackson says. “The issue presents extraordinary geopolitical challenges and offers extraordinary economic opportunities. Yet, the United States does not have a comprehensive energy roadmap.”

Jackson has urged a national focus on energy research as a focal point to excite and encourage greater interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). She has long warned of what she has dubbed a “Quiet Crisis” in America – the threat to the capacity of the United States to innovate due to reduced support for research and the looming shortage in the nation’s STEM workforce.

The conference examined current and prospective energy policies, energy security and environmental sustainability.