The Secretary of Energy of Energy will announce her next chief of staff — and more — “soon,” Tarak Shah, the outgoing chief, told all hands Tuesday in a farewell message.
Shah, who hit the campaign trail for Biden and lead beachhead teams into the Forrestal Building in Washington, will depart in April, he said in his message to staff. He has been chief of staff to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm almost since her confirmation on Feb. 25, 2021.
“[W]e have accomplished so much of what we set out to do fourteen months ago when President Biden took office — to restore this agency after years of proposed budget cuts, hiring freezes and an unprecedented global pandemic — and position us to lead the nation in solving the climate crisis,” Shah wrote in the memo, a copy of which the Exchange Monitor read. “You will hear from the Secretary soon about her plans to build on all that we have accomplished together so far and more news about my successor.”
Shah will depart with DOE’s nuclear leadership more or less sorted out. Granholm, a member of the cabinet, was swiftly confirmed, as was Jill Hruby, the administrator of DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the only direct report to Granholm in the entire nuclear-weapons sub-agency.
Geraldine Richmond, since November, has been undersecretary for science and innovation — boss, among others, of the assistant secretary for nuclear energy, whose office quarterbacks DOE’s strategy for safely disposing of the country’s nuclear waste, especially spent fuel from power plants.
Days before Shah turned in his notice, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee had scheduled a nomination hearing for Kathryn Huff, the nominee to lead the nuclear energy office. Huff was to appear for official vetting on Thursday.
Only the Office of Environmental Management, responsible for cleaning up shuttered nuclear-weapon production sites, did not have Senate-confirmed leadership as of Tuesday. That has been the case since the latter half of the Donald Trump administration, when then-Undersecretary of Energy for Science, Paul Dabbar, fired Anne White.
Career civil servant William “Ike” White (no relation) has been in charge at the cleanup office as a senior advisor since the Trump administration, and the White House during Biden’s first year has made no move to change that.