Remarks as Prepared for Secretary Bodman
Thank you, Leo for the introduction and for the lunch. It is a pleasure to be here with you all.
When President Bush asked me to become the nation's 11th Secretary of Energy, it was with the understanding that I would focus on the need to enhance America's energy security. I'm pleased to say we have made significant progress. We've put considerable resources, both in terms of dollars and man hours, into expanding supply, improving efficiency and developing clean sources of alternative energy. But competition for resources coming from the world's developing economies including China's and India's has raised the stakes for us here in the United States.
America must pursue an energy strategy not limited by our borders. Our energy future is not something we can determine alone; the projected increase in the global demand for energy in excess of 50 percent by 2030 makes this a certainty.
We can lead the world toward a shared and secure energy future that includes traditional energy sources as well as clean, renewable and alternative sources of energy. The large Asian economies, whether developed like South Korea's and Japan's or developing, like China's and India's must also come to terms, as we are doing, with the need for greater energy efficiency, the need for environmentally responsible energy production and the need for new energy technologies.
America and Asia have a shared energy future, one in which we may all prosper if we work together.
Because world conditions are changing, we must find ways to work together to confront resource nationalism, limited access and infrastructure constraints that effectively limit production to something less than what the world requires now and in the future. And we must consider all this in the context of global climate change and a carbon-constrained future.
Through various networks of international partnerships, both multi-lateral and bi-lateral, we are working to address all these issues. These partnerships are, in my judgment, useful and necessary to our energy relationships with Asia.
One is the Asia-Pacific Partnership (APP) which, as I think you know, just concluded a meeting where Canada was admitted to the partnership. This will broaden the dialogue and allows for a more integrated North America approach to the APP's deliberations.
The meeting also endorsed task force work projects with 110 plans and approved 18 new flagship plans that exemplify the partnership's focus and commitment. The APP also launched the "Asia-Pacific Energy Technology Co-operation Centre," to be financed and managed by South Korea, which will aggregate information on energy efficiency and best practices and share them with member countries.
And, in part because of the APP, we've seen U.S. companies take the lead in bringing combined heat and power and distributed generation technologies to China. Through the partnership, Solar Turbines producing 35 megawatts of clean energy were installed in China's Shanxi in less than a year's time.
America has also made it a priority to engage in discussions concerning the need for strategic petroleum reserves.
Last year I went to Asia for five-party talks with the biggest energy consumers: Chinese, Japanese, South Koreans and the Indians. We discussed the need for strategic petroleum reserves, particularly for the Chinese. I believe that China is now moving in the right direction with respect to reserves and we will continue to support them in this effort.
Another area for cooperation is in the effort to secure the expansion of clean, safe nuclear power throughout Asia. This, of course, means we need to address the issue of North Korea's nuclear plan which we are doing through the 6 Party Talks.
And we're making progress. Working Groups have been constituted to address North Korea's nuclear programs as well as economic, energy and humanitarian cooperation. Reciprocal steps, including energy assistance, will be provided as North Korea carries out its commitments to disclose and disable its nuclear programs.
We are also seeking to expand the use of civilian nuclear power through the President's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or GNEP. We, along with the Russians, the Chinese, the Japanese and the French have launched an international framework for sharing nuclear power with the developing world in ways that safeguard against proliferation of materials and deal responsibly with spent fuel.
GNEP represents the future of global cooperation in expanding environmentally sound nuclear power. At the 2nd GNEP ministerial in Vienna, Austria, we tripled the size of the partnership from the original 5 to 16. The partners were joined by 19 observing nations and we expect several of those countries to join the partnership soon.
These multi-lateral efforts are, as I said, important. Of equal importance are the direct talks underway with some of our Asian partners to develop common approaches to energy security.
Our energy dialogue with China is already producing results, with one notable accomplishment being last December's decision by the Chinese to buy nuclear reactors from Westinghouse. Our ongoing talks with the Japanese on nuclear energy also continue to bear fruit.
In April of 2007, I signed the U.S. -Japan Joint Nuclear Energy Action Plan, providing for increased cooperation on nuclear energy. This arrangement contributes to increased energy security and nuclear waste management, addresses nuclear nonproliferation and climate change, and advances GNEP.
All of these efforts are fueled by the recognition of our common challenges, including the problem of global climate change. I believe the best way to address it is through technology. This is also the best way, in my view, to keep pace with rising energy demand in an environmentally responsible fashion.
Since 2001, the U.S. has invested nearly $18 billion in climate change technology research and development. The President's current budget requests $3.9 billion in backing a 14 percent increase over last year's appropriation.
Through the President's Advanced Technology Initiative, we are working towards making clean energy technologies such as wind and solar power, biofuels, advanced batteries, hydrogen, and other technologies cost competitive with traditional sources and towards getting them to the market faster.
Through the D.O.E.'s Office of Science, we are using our supercomputers, you should know that D.O.E. owns or operates 5 of the world's 6 fastest computers which, among other things, are being put to use running complex climate modeling exercises that allow us to better predict the consequences of climate change.
Let me provide you a few statistics about energy and emissions in Asia.
In 1990, China and India combined for 13 percent of world emissions. By 2004, that share had risen to 22 percent largely because of their strong increase in coal use. This is an upward trend; 31 percent of total world CO2 emissions are expected to come from China and India by 2030.
China alone is expected to consume eleven percent more energy than the U.S. 2030. And that energy has to come from somewhere.
China, India and other nations could build all the traditional coal-fired plants they wish, but what kind of a world would that be?
President Bush recently convened a meeting in Washington of the major economies, notable for the presence of China and India among other nations to begin the discussion of what a post-Kyoto international climate arrangement might look like. Our preference, of course, is a consensus that allows productive economies the greatest degree of latitude possible for dealing with climate change so as not to impinge on global economic growth or countrywide priorities.
If any one thing is clear, it is that the world needs market-oriented, technology-driven solutions that allow global economic growth to continue.
An energy secure future has to be environmentally secure as well. The environmental record many developing economies have amassed only underscores the need for U.S. technologies to help them enhance their performance.
As we must depend on technology to show us the way to cleaner energy, we must also depend on it to help us be more efficient in the energy we consume. The most abundant source of new energy accessible to the U.S. is the energy we currently waste everyday.
Here I have abundant faith in the American spirit of inventiveness.
Our efforts to increase efficiency here at home, particularly by developing new technologies and improving upon existing ones will pay dividends providing energy savings along with technology developed and commercialized at home and abroad. America will be, I believe, the world's leader in the development of new energy efficient technologies that contribute to future global energy security while creating new markets for U.S. goods overseas.
We're also using new science to push the renewable energy envelope.
Earlier this year the Department made accessible $375 million to fund the creation and operation of three, cutting-edge Bioenergy Research Centers where some of the best minds in the country are at work trying to apply the lessons of the biotech revolution in pharmaceuticals to the problems of increased energy demand. If these centers can successfully develop ways to manufacture biofuels from cellulose, and I believe they will, we will change forever the global energy equation.
And we are moving ahead with energy efficiency technologies for homes as well. Under our Build America program, we are working with industry to produce homes by 2020 that produce as much energy as they consume, we call them "Zero Energy Homes".
If you take a walk down to the Countrywide Mall, you can see the entries for this year's Solar Decathlon. This is an effort D.O.E. sponsors that encourages science, architecture and engineering students to produce model homes that relay solely on the power of the sun to produce the energy a typical American family needs to run their home. Both of these initiatives are remarkable. And they will, I believe, generate the kinds of new energy efficient technologies that the developing and developed economies in Asia will want.
That, in brief, is an overview of what I believe constitutes our approach to developing a shared energy future with Asia. Our shared challenges are producing common efforts organized around common strategies.
As I said at the outset, we cannot be energy secure if the world is not energy secure. Future energy development requires new technology and new infrastructure, financed by vast sums of capital perhaps $20 trillion over the next 25 years. To be successful, all nations must embrace a transparent marketplace, a responsible investment climate and fair and predictable regulatory regimes.
We are committed to a shared dialogue with our Asian neighbors that address these concepts. We have developed a strong partnership with Asia and intend to see it through to common and energy secure future.
Thank you and now I'll be happy to take a few questions.
