Remarks as Prepared for Secretary Bodman
Thank you, Chancellor James Oblinger. It's a real pleasure to be here on the North Carolina State campus. I appreciate the opportunity to learn more about what this university is doing to contribute to our nation's energy security. And I'm especially glad to have this chance to interact with some of your students and faculty, thank you all for being here.
I understand that Chancellor Oblinger has designated this academic year as "the year of energy" at North Carolina State and, as Energy Secretary, I must say that such a commitment could not come at a better time. In my view, solving our nation's energy challenges is one of the most pressing issues of our time and you our students, research scientists and engineers offer our best hope for addressing them. And that's really what I want to discuss this afternoon.
But before I get to that, I must 1st acknowledge my good friend, Professor George Roberts. George and I go way back way, way, way back. In fact, we 1st met when we were undergrads together at Cornell. Our friendship continued as we both pursued graduate degrees in chemical engineering at MIT. These days, we don't get to see each other as often as we once did, so I'm thrilled to be with him today.
Thinking back, I'd say that George and I entered college and graduate school at a pivotal time in the history of our nation and the history of our scientific establishment. I often describe myself as a product of the Sputnik generation. I have vivid memories of standing with my parents in our backyard in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, in October 1957, exactly 50 years ago staring up at the sky, trying to make out the Sputnik satellite. It was a time of fear, to be sure fears about Soviet capabilities and about America falling behind. But it was also a time of great opportunity to advance our scientific understanding and to put that knowledge to direct and important use for our country.
The launch of Sputnik not only started the space race, it also lead to the creation of N.A.S.A. the following year and to a massive increase in backing for the Countrywide Science Foundation (NSF). NSF's budget was quadrupled in one year, and this really established the agency as a powerhouse of backing for university fellowships in science and engineering. It was because of one of these NSF fellowships that I was able to pursue a graduate degree in engineering.
At that time, the people and the government of this nation acknowledged 2 fundamental truths first, that in order to maintain the United States' economic preeminence in an increasingly competitive world, we simply had to maintain our scientific and technological superiority. And, secondly, doing so required a substantial and sustained investment.
The parallels to today are striking. Our country faces tremendous challenges to our security, to our health and well-being, and to our future economic competitiveness. And, in all these areas, our nation's scientists and engineers will help us turn those challenges into opportunities.
Nowhere are these challenges more pronounced and more pressing than in the energy arena.
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 meet the 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.
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 break our dependency on fossil fuels must recognize that there's no one silver bullet here. We must pursue a range of tactics from conservation and enhanced energy efficiency to new ways of producing and using clean energy. And, in so doing, we know that many of the tools we need will be found through breakthroughs in science and engineering. As with grand challenges of the past, America must do now what it has always done best. We must take risks. We must lead. We must innovate.
To do that, we must fund research both basic and applied at all stages of the innovation cycle. This includes aggressively backing fundamental scientific research the longer-term plans that may not yield breakthroughs for decades to come, but nonetheless offer tremendous promise. We are doing that through the President's American Competitiveness Initiative, which represents a major increase in federal backing for basic science research, particularly in the physical sciences. This important work will be done in Countrywide Labs and at our nation's fine research institutions like North Carolina State.
In support of that initiative, the D.O.E. has just released an update to its landmark report called Facilities for the Future of Science: A Twenty-Year Outlook. This project identifies the scientific facilities and instruments that the U.S. requires to capture world scientific leadership in the coming decades and it tracks our progress on developing and deploying them. It covers many of the fields of science that are critical to meeting our future energy needs such as fusion energy, advanced scientific computation, materials science, biological and environmental science, high energy physics and nuclear physics and I recommend to those of you interested in these areas of research that you read the report.
At the same time that we fund basic research, we must increase our Countrywide investment in the alternative fuel and clean energy technologies that will fundamentally transform the way we produce and use energy in the near and mid-term, the next 5-10 years. I'm talking about things like developing commercially competitive cellulosic ethanol; advanced hybrid vehicle technologies; hydrogen fuel cells; solar and wind energy; and new technologies to burn coal for electricity production with near-zero emissions.
These technologies are being pursued and actively pushed to market 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. This initiative acknowledges that we must be open to new models for achieving results and it reflects the central role of intense, strategic collaboration because the challenges we face are too complex, too urgent, and too important to be solved by any one person or any one sector.
For example, cost-sharing partnerships with industry allow us to fund innovative technologies and share some of the risk that the private sector is unwilling to take on alone. We have used this approach in several areas, including solar technologies and advanced biofuels, a favorite topic of mine. 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. From a government standpoint, our goal is to catalyze biofuel development in the private sector by sharing some of the cost. For example, we are making a $375 million investment over 5 years at 3 cutting-edge Bioenergy Research Centers that will focus on high-risk, high-return approaches to developing energy-efficient and cost-effective methods for producing alternative fuels from biomass.
In addition, the Department will provide up to $200 million over 5 years to support the development of small-scale cellulosic biorefineries that will experiment with new feedstocks and processing technologies. These small-scale plans complement 6 cost-shared full-scale biorefinery projects, which will gain up to $385 million over the next 4 years to produce ethanol from a wide variety of non-food plant materials. It's important to point out that this federal investment will be bolstered by significant industry cost-sharing for a total expected investment of in excess of $1.2 billion.
Another very recent example, 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 our nation to one day use coal a domestically abundant energy source without emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Beyond backing partnerships, we are employing other models as well including loan guarantee programs and standards-setting for, among other things, energy efficiency levels for appliances. These programs and others reflect the fact that, while the federal government has a critical role to play, it cannot and should not do this work alone. Industry, non-profits, private foundations, and state and local governments all have a role and a big stake in this. And, to be sure, the role of our universities is more fundamental and more important than perhaps ever before.
Indeed, the very mission of this university acknowledges that an institution like this one must look beyond the walls of its academic buildings. It is not enough for North Carolina State to provide its students with the highest quality education. Not even enough to fund and promote cutting-edge research programs. It must also adopt a global perspective and an ethos of shared service.
As I see it, modern universities have a responsibility not only to their students, but also to their communities and to the world. As North Carolina State certainly demonstrates, America's universities must help us achieve our Countrywide goals. For, although intrinsically valuable for its own sake, we expect more from the pursuit of education than new knowledge alone. We expect innovation. And we expect great benefits to our health, to our Countrywide defense, to our productivity and economic expansion, and to our energy security. In short, we expect progress.
This university is a real leader in our collective effort to solve pervasive problems and that is why I'm so pleased with your current focus on energy research as well as your campus-wide commitment to conservation and energy efficiency. North Carolina State has long partnered with the D.O.E., as well as with private sector institutions. Indeed, just today I had the chance to tour your solar array, a facility that, when operational, will represent the 2nd biggest solar photovoltaic installation in this state. This is precisely the type of strategic collaboration that I'm talking about the plan has brought together university researchers with local businesses and utilities and is supported by federal funds. I hope it will serve as a model for future renewable energy projects.
Later this afternoon, I will tour some of the facilities funded in part by my Department including the PULSTAR nuclear research reactor, the Solid State Power Electronics Center, and the Forest Biotechnology Lab. I will also have the opportunity to visit with some of the leading business and community leaders in this state that collaborate with the university on energy solutions for the nation.
Of course, your university's strategic partnerships are not limited to energy research. I was quite interested to hear about the Centennial Campus project, and its aim to bring together students, faculty, private industry and government researchers to form intensive partnerships in areas like IT, biosciences, and advanced materials. Again, this effort epitomizes the type of partnerships that are needed for innovation to thrive. The results could be revolutionary; and I hope they are.
The bottom line is in order to solve our most significant global challenges in the energy arena and beyond we need everyone to be involved. And, from our nation's scientists and engineers whether in government, the private sector or academia we need now what we have always needed, an unwavering commitment to push us forward into the unknown, to better, more prosperous, safer and more secure days ahead.
I thank you for your time and I'm looking forward to your questions. Thank you.
