Is Nanotechnology the Answer to our Energy Needs?

We are in a “Sputnik moment,” the president said in his second official State of the Union address in January. Energy Secretary Steven Chu also likes to invoke this historical metaphor to add an atmosphere of portent to his talks. To be sure, this favorite parable of American technoscientific rout and redemption, beloved by generations of politicians and pundits, has lost most of its power to shock, awe, and inspire through overuse. Still, the fact that this red flag is being waved as frantically as ever these days means we should probably pay attention.

The antagonist de jour, of course, is China. Rapidly building advanced energy plant, grid, and end-use infrastructure that will outclass their creaky U.S. counterparts, the Asian giant, remarked Chu , is winning the “energy race.” Worse, more and more Americans worry that China is on the verge of surpassing the United States in science-and-technology innovation, even though the authoritarian nation faces a host of problems in its own innovation ecosystem.

Secretary Chu’s prescription? Increased federal investment in “scientific R&D.” In short: Remember the Sputnik moment.

Aerospace history has become a stock American folk syllogism recalling a fall from, and challenging a return to, grace. If we can put men on the moon, surely we can build a better mousetrap, or close the gap in the energy race. But is the problem really a crisis of American innovation?

If so, it does not stem from a lack of trying. Nuclear and photovoltaic power are American inventions, fuel cells were first made practicable in this country, and, for a time, electric cars and hydrogen power seemed just around the corner. The last 40 years have witnessed booms and busts in all of these systems. Yet American researchers do not appear to be running short of new ideas, as research in high-efficiency batteries, polymer photovoltaic systems, and artificial photosynthesis shows.

The issue instead seems to be the relationship between innovation and national industrial recovery and job creation. To the energy secretary, the broader federal science-and-technology policy establishment, and legions of private-sector R&D contractors, innovation policies and industrial policies are virtually one and the same. China, held Chu, had progressed industrially by taking a page from the U.S. playbook, using the state as a “slight rudder” to guide the private sector in taking the dominant role in R&D.

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