Image by U.S. Department of Energy
President Donald Trump on Tuesday nominated Paul Dabbar of New York, an investment banking executive at J.P. Morgan, to be under secretary for science in the U.S. Department of Energy.
Dabbar is managing director for mergers and acquisitions for J.P. Morgan, and he has more than $400 billion in investment experience across all energy sectors, according to a statement posted by the White House Office of the Press Secretary on Tuesday. Those energy sectors include solar, wind, geothermal, distributed-generation, utility, LNG, pipeline, oil and gas, trading, and energy technology, the statement said. Dabbar has also led the majority of all nuclear transactions.
Before joining J.P. Morgan, Dabbar served as a nuclear submarine officer in Mare Island, California, and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and he was deployed to the North Pole, where he conducted environmental research, the statement said.
Dabbar currently serves on the U.S. Department of Energy Environmental Management Advisory Board.
If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Dabbar would succeed Franklin “Lynn” Orr in the post. Orr left the job January 20, Inauguration Day, after serving as DOE’s first under secretary for science and energy. Orr started serving as under secretary on December 17, 2014.
The office was created by former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz to closely integrate DOE’s basic science, applied research, technology development, and deployment efforts. Moniz created the new under secretary slot after a number of groups recommended revamping DOE’s management structure, according to Science magazine.
It’s not clear whether new Energy Secretary Rick Perry might make any organizational changes.
As under secretary, Orr oversaw DOE’s offices of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Fossil Energy, Indian Energy Policy and Programs, Nuclear Energy, and Science. All together, these programs manage the majority of DOE’s national laboratories, or 13 of the 17 labs, according to DOE. Oak Ridge National Laboratory is an Office of Science lab, and it is involved with other programs such as Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
As under secretary, Orr was also the principal adviser to the secretary and deputy secretary on clean energy technologies and science and energy research initiatives.
Dabbar has been a lecturer at the U.S. Naval Academy Economics Department, and he has conducted research at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, according to the White House statement.
He received a bachelor’s degree from the U.S. Naval Academy, and a master’s degree in business administration from Columbia University. Dabbar and his wife, Andrea, are the parents of two children. They reside in Scarsdale, New York, and Nantucket, Massachusetts, the White House statement said.
Learn more about Dabbar here.
See the White House statement on Dabbar’s nomination here.
Learn more about Orr here.
More information will be added as it becomes available.
Do you appreciate this story or our work in general? If so, please consider a monthly subscription to Oak Ridge Today. See our Subscribe page here. Thank you for reading Oak Ridge Today.
Copyright 2017 Oak Ridge Today. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Leave a Reply