Remarks as Prepared for Secretary Bodman
Thank you, Senator Dorgan, for that kind introduction. It is indeed a pleasure to be here with you in the great state of North Dakota, a state that will continue to play a critical role in our collective effort to increase our nation's energy security. You have been a leader in the Congress on energy issues, and I look forward to your continued strong collaboration with the D.O.E..
The Senator and I just had the opportunity to visit the trade-show floor and I want to commend you all for bringing together such an impressive group of companies and organizations.
The way I see it, this conference could not come at a better time, because today our country faces a major and pervasive set of challenges related to providing clean, cost-effective and secure energy to power our homes, our vehicles and our businesses. The basic components of this problem may be well known, but they bear repeating:
First, global demand for energy is strong and will continue to grow. The projections are pretty staggering: by 2030, we estimate that global energy consumption will grow by over 50 percent, with 70 percent of that growth coming from the world's emerging economies. For electricity specifically, we estimate that U.S. demand will increase by about 50 percent by 2030, with global demand nearly doubling. To put it another way: to meet future demand in this country, we would require 285,000 megawatts of new base-load capacity. By way of comparison, that represents roughly the total capacity of all the coal-burning power plants now operating in the U.S. and almost 3 times the capacity of the existing fleet of nuclear plants.
As we confront this rapidly growing demand, we know that our economy - like so many around the world - is overly dependent on fossil fuels, and particularly foreign oil. At the same time, we must recognize the realities of global climate change and work to slow the growth of greenhouse gas emissions and pollution here and around the world.
This set of challenges will only grow more pressing - and more acute - with time. So, in my view, it is not enough to say that we should expand - or should diversify - the energy options accessible to us . . . in reality, we must. We have no choice. Our economic competitiveness, countrywide security and environmental health depend on it. The bottom line is that the U.S. must take steps now to ensure a future energy supply that is clean, affordable, reliable and secure, and I'm proud to say that we are.
Any strategy to truly enhance our energy security must recognize that there's no one silver bullet here. We must pursue a range of tactics.
For starters, we must dramatically increase our countrywide investment in alternative fuels and renewable energy sources. I'm talking about the technologies that will fundamentally transform the way we produce and use energy in the near- and mid-term (say, the next 5-10 years) things like: developing commercially competitive cellulosic ethanol; advanced hybrid vehicle technologies; hydrogen fuel cells; solar photovoltaics and high-efficiency wind power, an area where this state is a real leader.
These technologies are being pursued through the Advanced Energy Initiative that President Bush suggested last year, the goal of which is to identify the technologies that could have the greatest impact and then really go after them. In some cases, these technologies are already in the pipeline and, as a matter of sound public policy, need to be pushed more quickly to market.
This Initiative acknowledges that we must fund research - both basic and applied - at all stages of the innovation cycle. So, at the same time, we are also aggressively backing fundamental scientific research: the longer-term plans that may not yield breakthroughs for years to come, but nonetheless offer tremendous promise. We are doing that through the American Competitiveness Initiative, which represents a major increase in federal backing for basic research, particularly in the physical sciences. This is serious money for serious science in areas like supercomputing, nanotechnology, advanced nuclear reactor technologies, and fusion energy. The results may not be seen for decades, but the critical investments must be made now.
In addition to recognizing the fundamental importance of science and technology, these 2 initiatives also reflect the central role of the private sector and academia in solving our energy challenges. The federal government must encourage - indeed, we absolutely require - intense, strategic collaboration, because the situation we face is too complex, too urgent, and too important to be solved by any one organization or any one sector.
To this end, we are employing a range of collaborative models - including cost-sharing partnerships with industry and loan guarantee programs, both of which allow us to fund innovative technologies and share some of the risk that the private sector is unwilling to take on alone. These programs cover a range of technical areas, including solar technologies and advanced biofuels, a favorite topic of mine - and, I know, a favorite of Senator Dorgan's as well. With biofuels, our strategy is, in part, to build on the vast accumulation of knowledge in the biotechnology industry and to use it in the production of cost-competitive alternative energy. So, for example, we are making cost-shared investments in cutting-edge Bioenergy Research Centers as well as a series of biorefinery plans focused on producing ethanol from a wide variety of non-food plant materials.
The point here is that we must not focus solely on developing new sources of clean energy. We also must make them cost-competitive and bring them to market. And, as importantly, we must facilitate the capacity to deliver them. To do that, we certainly need more - and upgraded - transmission capacity to connect places that need additional energy with places - like North Dakota - that have the potential to supply more renewable power. I know this is a topic that you'll be hearing more about later today from one of my D.O.E. colleagues, Assistant Secretary Kevin Kolevar, and FERC Chairman Joseph Kelliher.
While we are rightly placing a great deal of emphasis on renewables and alternative fuels, we also must recognize that our economy is - and will remain - heavily dependent on fossil energy. For example, I know that Senator Dorgan has long argued that coal must be a key component of our nation's energy future. And I agree. After all, this nation is blessed with an abundant coal supply. The challenge is: we must find ways to use it more cleanly and efficiently to reduce - or perhaps eliminate - its environmental impacts.
One way to do this is through the development of carbon sequestration capacity. Earlier this month the Department announced that we have awarded funds for the 1st 3 large-scale carbon sequestration plans in the United States, which will conduct large volume tests for the storage of one million or more tons of carbon dioxide in deep saline reservoirs. D.O.E. projects to invest $197 million over 10 years for the projects, whose estimated value including cost-sharing with our partners is over $300 million. Collectively, these formations have the potential to store in excess of one hundred years of CO2 emissions from all major sources of pollution in North America and will help enable us to one day use coal without emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And I'm quite pleased that one of these 3 partnerships will be led by the Energy & Environmental Research Center at the University of North Dakota. In addition to this state, the so-called "Plains CO2 Reduction Partnership" will encompass South Dakota, Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, and Wisconsin, along with the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.
Even as we bring more alternative and renewable energy online and develop new ways to produce fossil energy more cleanly, we also must expand access to safe and emissions-free nuclear power in this country and do so in a way that responsibly manages waste and dramatically reduces proliferation risks. Because - and this is a critical point: at present, nuclear power is the only mature technology that can supply large amounts of emissions-free base load power to help us meet the expected growth in demand. If we are talking about what is accessible to order right now that would have a material impact on our ability to produce "home-grown," clean power, we must talk nuclear. And we have not licensed a new nuclear plant in this country in over 30 years. That must change. We are working to see that it does by, among other things, implementing federal risk insurance (or so-called "stand-by support") and loan guarantee programs, to try to remove some of the roadblocks associated with getting the next generation of nuclear plants online.
There is a final component of a comprehensive strategy as well: we must continue to promote conservation and enhanced energy efficiency wherever we can - in our homes, our vehicles, our offices and across all industries. Because the truth is, the biggest source of immediately-available "new" energy is the energy that we waste everyday. Everyone can do more to conserve. I'm talking about things like: keeping current with vehicle maintenance; insulating your home and choosing energy-efficient appliances and compact fluorescent light bulbs; considering a fuel-efficient vehicle or taking public transportation; and, if you own a business, participating in an energy assessment plan - or encouraging your employer to do so. Though taken alone, these actions may seem minor, if done consistently; they can have an impact in precisely the right direction - taking some immediate pressure off demand. Just consider this: if every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR®-qualified bulb, we would save enough energy to light in excess of three million homes for a year, in excess of $600 million in yearly energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of in excess of 800,000 cars.
The bottom line is: the challenges that we face are complex and did not develop overnight. And so, the solution is necessarily multi-faceted. There are things we all can do today. There are new technologies on the cusp of commercialization that can help us tomorrow. And there are new energy-sources and cleaner, safer production methods on the horizon that will power our lives in the future.
To get there we need 3 things. We need the type of forward-looking leadership and backing commitments that this Administration - and leaders in Congress, like Senator Dorgan - are providing. We need the dedication, ingenuity and hard work of American scientists and engineers - in all sectors. And we need the commitment of the American people to achieve together what none of us can do alone.
And I thank everyone in this room for being part of the solution and for working hard to ensure a clean, reliable, affordable and secure energy future for America.
Thank you all.
