The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Technology Development refers to its five most important environmental restoration and waste management problems requiring technology research and development as focus areas. There are also three areas for research and development that cut across the five main focus areas, (see list below). Each focus area has a management team and focus area review group. In addition, each DOE site will have a Site Technology Coordination Group that will work with the focus area groups. Representatives of the STCGs and individuals supporting the STCGs at DOE sites met January 18-19, 1995 in Washington, D.C. to discuss implementing the focus area approach, the roles and responsibilities of the STCGs, and the draft STCG charter.
During the workshop, Thomas Grumbly, Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management, said technology development is the highest priority in the environmental management program. Later, Gerald Boyd, Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary for Technology Development, said the STCGs are important to the success of the focus area approach to research and development. Boyd also cautioned against making the STCGs a rigid, bureaucratic layer in the five focus area group organizations.
The mission of the STCGs is to ensure major technology needs of their sites are communicated to the focus area groups and that their site operations implement newly developed technologies that will improve remediation and waste management. By working with technology users, developers, and stakeholders, STCGs will help ensure new technologies respond to site needs, comply with regulatory requirements, are acceptable to the public, and achieve cost savings.
Each STCG has a slot to be filled by a local stakeholder representative, such as a local elected official, labor representative, or environmental advocate. Individual sites will select the person who will fill that role on their STCG. Some sites, such as Hanford, have asked members of their site-specific advisory boards to serve as their STCG stakeholder representatives. Other sites are still in the preliminary stage of forming their STCG.
In break-out groups, workshop participants discussed what type of DOE locations should be considered sites and how each STCG chairperson will interact with the focus area groups and other STCGs.
DOE's Research and Development Focus Areas
Cross-cutting Areas
