United States Department of Energy

LETTER TO HONORABLE JOE BIDEN AND HIS CABINET ENERGY SECRETARY DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

Jack Rosenthal
3 min readJan 19, 2021

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I am most interested in Energy and your administration being successful for the United States. Your current pick for your Cabinet Energy Secretary of Jennifer Granholm is important. I am writing this to give my suggested guidelines for your review and for your Energy Secretary. I have worked as an Engineer with a focus on Energy for over forty (40) years.

I am a retired Engineer, from Honeywell International. Also for the past five (5) years, my job is giving back to students in High School, serving as a teacher of Engineering. My goal with teaching is to get students into engineering school for college.

I have for my whole working career been involved with Energy. I am reading Barack Obama’s new book A Promised Land. When reading the index information on Energy, it brings backs memories of all the work that was done on Energy during your time as Vice President.

As a Board Member on the Los Angeles chapter of International Society of Automation (ISA), we are involved with members who serve for automation and electrical control of Manufacturing Plants, Electricity Generation Facilities and Carbon Processing Facilities. I was hoping that after confirmation of your Cabinet Secretary of Energy, that they could speak to our membership of the Los Angeles Section

These are my guidelines for You, Cabinet Secretary of Energy and the Energy Secretaries staff on Energy:

1. “Role for government: to ensure that the rules are correct and that the incentives are what we actually want them to be for the long-term maximum happiness of people into the future. Where I think government does not do a great job is when they want to not just be a referee on the field, they want to be-a player on the field.” Per Elon Musk in Wall Street Journal 12/14/2020 page R16

2. Global Warming/Greenhouse Gases/Energy Selection — I add energy selection as this is when decisions are made. As an engineer this is where there is a choice. When build an electric power plant what fuel source is used. When air condition a building is the air conditioner electric driven, natural gas driven or solar driven.

3. Energy selections should be based on economics. They are sometimes regulated.

4. Energy sources change over time. Innovation is the key to: efficiency, air pollution, CO2/Greenhouse Gases (GHG) emissions. Let the best innovations win.

5. We are in world energy markets. Let them work.

6. I do dislike when city governments add taxes to energy. It skews the true economics decision about how much energy matters. We need to lower energy costs to be competitive in this world market.

7. Let the local utilities support energy innovations. Let the federal government be in support of the local utilities role in energy innovations.

I truly hope the Energy Secretary in your Cabinet shares some of these ideas. Thank you and good luck with your upcoming Presidency.

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Jack Rosenthal
Jack Rosenthal

Written by Jack Rosenthal

PE, Certified Energy Manager US, SCAQMD CPP, High School Engineering Teacher, Retired Honeywell Intern CTE Credentialed Teacher Engineering ISA Board AEE