Credit crunch be dammed! Mere days after announcing its endowment is expected to be down by 20 to 30% this year Stanford has unveiled plans for a $100 million new research institute.

The Precourt Institute for Energy – named for oil and gas executive and donor Jay Precourt – will bring together researchers in areas ranging from solar cells to policy. The money will be used to endow five new professorships and bring in 20 new grad students, as well as to fund research (Stanford Daily).

“Energy is certainly one of those issues, posing a threat to our economy, to national security and, through the use of fossil fuels, to our environment,” says university president John Hennessy (press release). “Addressing the challenge of energy will require research on a wide range of issues, from energy efficiency to development and deployment of renewable sources, to reducing the effect of fossil fuels.”

Quote of the day goes to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who is one of the donors. Schmidt is seeing the opportunities of the current financial situation (Stanford Daily):

A crisis is a terrible thing to waste. The energy industry moves slowly — compared to where I come from — and it needs to move a lot faster.

Precourt put in $50 million for the institute. Around $40 million of the total cash will be used to create a new ‘TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy’, named for donors Thomas Steyer and Kat Taylor and not the relationship between two well known actors.

“Stanford has marvelous talent at its disposal and has been more than any other university in California a launching pad for high-tech business and investment,” V. John White, executive director of the Sacramento-based Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies, told the Green Ink blog of the NY Times. “Going back to H.P., all the way through to Google, Stanford has produced talent that has transformed the economy. So I think it’s a really good thing to put a sharper focus and some significant resources behind green energy.”