April 2 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu will be Harvard University’s commencement speaker on June 4, the Cambridge, Massachusetts, school said in a statement today.

Chu, confirmed by the U.S. Senate in January, was a co- winner of the Nobel Prize for physics in 1997 for his role developing methods to cool and trap atoms with lasers. As energy secretary, he has said his goals include lessening U.S. dependence on fossil fuels and reducing the carbon emissions that cause climate change, the statement said.

Chu, 61, directed the U.S. government’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, from 2004 to 2008, increasing its focus on alternative energies and environmental research. Harvard invited him as it steps up study of those areas and efforts to promote environmentally friendly practices on campus, the school said.

“How to use science and public policy to confront the environmental consequences of energy use is a matter of enormous interest and importance to Harvard as a university, and to our alumni as citizens,” said Walter H. Morris Jr., president of the Harvard Alumni Association, in the statement. “Steven Chu stands front and center in the nation’s effort to rise to that challenge.”

“Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling was last year’s commencement speaker.

Chu has pledged to speed the Energy Department’s delivery of billions of dollars worth of loan guarantees for renewable energy projects. The first such payment was announced March 20, a $535 million guarantee supporting construction of a solar- panel manufacturing plant by Solyndra Inc. in Freemont, California.

The secretary had to backtrack on a statement in February that seeking changes in oil production from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries was not his “domain.” He later told reporters the comment arose from his “naivete.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Nussbaum in New York anussbaum1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: April 2, 2009 12:30 EDT