Strategic Plan OUR CORE VALUES We have developed the following core values to guide us in the achievement of our goals. 1. We are customer-oriented. • Our decisions and actions are responsive to our customer's needs. • We foster a participatory government in which the opinions and input of diverse stakeholders are sought and considered prior to making decisions. • We develop policies to address major challenges in a proactive, collaborative way with our customers and stakeholders. • We are open and honest and want to be trusted by our customers and stakeholders. 2. We value public safety and respect the environment. • We place a high priority on the protection of public health and safety in all of our operations. • We are committed to the restoration of the environment through cleanup of contamination caused by past operations. • We recognize the seriousness of the environmental impacts of our operations, and we develop and employ processes and technologies to reduce or eliminate waste production and pollution in these operations • We will be a leader in improving the quality of the environment for future generations. 3. We believe people are our most important resource. • We are committed to providing a safe and healthy workplace for all our employees and contractors. • We value the needs of individuals. • We reward employees based on performance. ⚫ We are committed to improving the knowledge, skills, and abilities of our employees. • We value the richness, experience, and imaginative ideas contributed by a diverse workforce. • We share credit with all contributors. • We value listening as an essential tool in learning from others. • Our employees are forthright in sharing their experiences so we can learn from each other. 4. We value creativity and innovation. • We are committed to a flexible operating environment that facilitates the pursuit of new technologies, processes, programmatic approaches, and ideas that challenge the status quo. • We seek out, nurture, and reward innovation in daily activities, ranging from the routine to the complex. • Our employees are empowered to pursue creative solutions • We recognize and highly regard resourcefulness, efficiency, and effectiveness. • We consider adaptable, entrepreneurial ap proaches that can respond quickly to the rapidly changing world business and political environment to be essential. 5. We are committed to excellence. • We consider quality and continuous improvement essential to our success. • We are committed to excellence in everything we do. 6. We work as a team and advocate teamwork. • We reinforce the notion of a common or greater • We value teamwork, participation, and the pursuit • We work as a team with other Federal agencies. 7. We recognize that leadership, empowerment, and accountability are essential. • We are visionary in our everyday activities. • Our leaders trust and support individuals to make • We are effective stewards of the taxpayer's • Our actions are result-oriented. 8. We pursue the highest standards of ethical behavior. • We maintain a personal commitment to professionalism and integrity. • We assure conformance with applicable laws. regulations, and responsible business practices. • We keep our commitments. • We are objective and fair. About the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology President Clinton established the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) by Executive Order 12882 at the same time that he established the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC). The PCAST serves as the highest level private sector science and technology advisory group for the President and the NSTC. The Committee members are distinguished individuals appointed by the President, and are drawn from industry, education and research institutions, and other non-governmental organizations. The Assistant to the President for Science and Technology co-chairs the Committee with a private sector member selected by the President. The formal link between the PCAST and the NSTC ensures that national needs remain an overarching guide for the NSTC. The PCAST provides feedback about Federal programs and actively advises the NSTC about science and technology issues of national importance. Gene Carl Feldman, NASA, created the cover from a Mosaic satellite image "The Earth at Night" (© 1985) compiled by W.T. Sullivan, III, University of Washington, from satellite photographs made by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program of the U.S. Air Force. Feldman converted the original black and white photograph from a Mercator Projection of the Earth into two orthographic projections. The lights depict sources of CO2 emissions: lights of cities; forest and agricultural fires; and natural gas flares. These also suggest the global importance of energy, the focus of this study. EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT PRESIDENT'S COMMITTEE OF ADVISORS ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY WASHINGTON, D.C. 20502 November 4, 1997 President William J. Clinton The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W. Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President: I am pleased to transmit on behalf of the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) the final report Federal Energy Research and Development for the Challenges of the 21st Century. This report, approved by PCAST, is in response to your January 14, 1997, letter to John Young requesting a review of the current national energy R&D portfolio. The report expands on the Executive Summary which we delivered to you on September 30, 1997, presenting a definitive strategy on how to ensure that the United States has a program that addresses its energy and environmental needs for the next century. PCAST endorses the report's findings that this country's economic prosperity, environmental quality, national security, and world leadership in science and technology all require improving our energy technologies, and that an enhanced national R&D effort is needed to provide these improvements. The inadequacy of current energy R&D is especially acute in relation to the challenge of responding responsibly and cost-effectively to the risk of global climatic change from society's greenhouse gas emissions, in particular, carbon dioxide from combustion of fossil fuels. PCAST recommends focusing the government's energy R&D on projects where high potential payoffs for society as a whole justify bigger R&D investments than industry would be likely to make on the basis of expected private returns and where modest government investments can effectively complement, leverage, or catalyze work in the private sector. The report recommends an increase, over a five-year period, of $1 billion in the Department of Energy's annual budget for applied energy-technology R&D. The largest shares of such an increase would go to R&D in energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies, but nuclear fusion and fission would also receive increases. The composition of the R&D supported on advanced fossil-fuel technologies would change in favor of longer-term opportunities, including fuel cells and carbon-sequestration technologies, but the overall spending level for fossil-fuel technologies would stay roughly constant in real terms. The proposed total for FY 2003 would return the DOE's real level of effort in applied energy-technology R&D in that year to about where it was in FY 1991 and FY 1992. In constant dollars, the average real growth rate would be 8.3 percent per year. |