UPDATE 1-Obama to announce picks for EPA, Energy on Monday -official

WASHINGTON, March 4 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will announce on Monday his intent to nominate air quality expert Gina McCarthy to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and nuclear physicist Ernest Moniz to head the Department of Energy, a White House official said.

McCarthy would likely become the face of Obama's latest push to fight climate change. Currently the assistant administrator for the EPA Office of Air and Radiation, she would replace Lisa Jackson, who has stepped down as EPA chief.

Moniz, a former undersecretary of energy during the Clinton administration, is director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Energy Initiative, a research group that gets funding from industry heavyweights including BP, Chevron , and Saudi Aramco for academic work on projects aimed at reducing greenhouse gases.

Moniz would replace Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, who is stepping down.

The White House said Obama would make a personnel announcement at 10:15 a.m. EST (1515 GMT). The president also plans to announce his choice of Sylvia Mathews Burwell, head of the Walmart Foundation, to become director of the White House budget office.