Multiple national media sources, including a 20 February 2013 Reuters report quoting sources familiar with the process, say President Barack Obama intends to nominate air quality expert Gina McCarthy to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and nuclear physicist Ernest Moinz to lead the Department of Energy (DOE).
McCarthy would likely become the face of President Obama’s effort to fight climate change. Currently the assistant administrator for the EPA Office of Air and Radiation, she would replace Lisa Jackson, who stepped down as EPA chief this month.

Gina McCarthy

She later served as an environmental policy adviser to then Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and launched the state’s first Climate Protection Action Plan.

In 2004, McCarthy was appointed to head Connecticut’s Department of Environmental Protection and helped lead the state into a carbon cap-and-trade system for Northeastern states, known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

Ernest Moinz

Moniz, a former undersecretary of energy during the Clinton administration, is director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Energy Initiative, a research group that gets funding from industry including BP, Chevron, and Saudi Aramco for academic work on projects aimed at reducing greenhouse gases.  Moniz would replace Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, who is stepping down.

By choosing Moniz, Obama would put another scientist at the head of the Department of Energy.  At MIT, Moniz led intensive studies about the future of coal, nuclear energy and natural gas, and he helped attract funding and research momentum to energy projects on campus.

What this means to youPresident Obama has said reducing greenhouse gas emissions will be a second term priority.  Nominating Gina McCarthy at EPA and Ernest Moinz at DOE indicate an Obama administration commitment to the issue.

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