With the decline of primary energy sources, the world should now brace itself for the new energy technology era, said Steven Chu, former United States Secretary of Energy and Nobel laureate in physics.

“Energy is no longer a birth right,” Chu said Wednesday in his keynote speech of Energy Tech Insight 2013, jointly hosted by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning.

This year’s forum, the fourth session of the annual series, was themed “Energy Technology 3.0., Opening a New World.”

The trend of energy sources is changing fast, amid the growing anxiety over conventional fossil fuels, the resurgence of natural gas and the persistence of nuclear power, according to the Stanford professor.

“It is fortunately presumed that there is a huge amount of technically recoverable shale oil and gas in the world, about 10 times the U.S. reserves,” he said.

Despite such a possibility of abundant new energy sources, Korea’s imminent task is to develop a new energy plan for the future, especially as it is still heavily reliant on imports, he added.

“In order to reduce energy consumption and regulate the energy sources, fundamental changes are needed not only in technology, but also in lifestyle and government administration,” Chu said.

He thus suggested that administrators talk to one another and create a joint funding opportunity, just as he did during his years as Secretary of Energy under the first term of President Barack Obama.

“Such joint occasion, however, requires leadership as officials will have to be forced into communication in the initial stage,” he said.

This came in response to the concerns that the energy policies in Korea are monopolized by the MOTIE, excluding the participation of other government departments and private organizations.

“Korea is on the right track, beginning to set regulations on energy consumers but should not forget the incentive part for model examples,” he added.

By Bae Hyun-jung (tellme@heraldcorp.com)