Remarks as Prepared for Secretary Bodman
Thank you, Dr. Coleman
I am very pleased to be at the University of Michigan -- which is not only one of our nation's premier research universities, but it is also a partner with our Department in some important automotive and energy research projects. I'll say more about that in a moment. I'm also going to make an announcement about a significant step our Department is taking this week in the area of vehicle technology development.
But 1st let me say that I am particularly pleased to be speaking at this conference of the Phoenix Memorial Energy Institute. When I received the invitation to join you here today, I called my friend Jim Duderstadt to find out a bit more about the Phoenix Institute -- how it was started, and what it is you do here. He explained to me that, back in 1948, the University's Board of Regents established a memorial in honor of the students and faculty who lost their lives in World War II. I believe he said there were 585 altogether.
As part of that memorial--that tribute--the Regents created something called the Phoenix Project, which was devoted to examining the peaceful uses of the atom. And from that early plan grew the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Energy Institute, which as I understand it, was formed last year to build upon and broaden the work you have done in atomic energy -- and address the whole range of energy challenges we face today.
Now, in classical mythology -- I looked this up before I came here -- the phoenix is supposed to rise from the ashes and be reborn every 500 years. But by my reckoning, from the time your 1st Phoenix Plan was formed after World War II, and the time it was reborn, so to speak, as the Phoenix Energy Institute last year, was only 58 years. So I think you are a little ahead of schedule! But, let me hasten to add, I'm glad you are, because the nation can certainly benefit from your efforts, your experience, and your expertise.
Like the Phoenix Institute, the Energy Department can trace its origins back to the Atoms for Peace Initiative after World War II. And also like this Institute, our Department has grown and expanded over years. We now take a broad, interdisciplinary approach to enhancing the nation's energy security across the board.
Many people don't realize that, including our 2008 budget, the Bush Administration has committed $15 billion to developing cleaner, cheaper and more reliable sources of energy. These efforts are culminating in the President's Advanced Energy Initiative--which he announced last year. This is a focused project to accelerate backing for the most promising clean energy technologies, including solar and wind power, clean coal technology, and next-generation nuclear power.
Those technologies are largely about generating electricity--and they will be critical to meeting our growing need for affordable and reliable electrical power. The other part of the energy equation is, of course, the transportation sector. We have ambitious goals here as well.
You may have heard President Bush declare in his State of the Union Address last month his project for reducing America's gasoline consumption by 20 percent within the next 10 years.
To achieve this, the President suggested a new Alternative Fuels Mandate of 35 billion gallons of alternative or renewable fuel by 2017 -- that's 5 times the 2012 target currently in the law. If we're successful, we expect this will displace 15% of our yearly gasoline use within 10 years. The 2nd part of the President's project involves reforming and modernizing CAFÉ requirements for cars and extending the current light truck rule -- which will account for the other five percent. Together, we expect these measures will help reduce America's dependence on hostile or unstable regimes, and also check the growth of carbon emissions. In addition, I should mention that the President suggested doubling the size of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to further protect the nation from shocks in the oil market.
Realistically, there is no way we can accomplish these objectives without the active participation of our partners outside government. This includes academics like Jim and Ernie Moniz and many others who are with us today. Here at the University of Michigan, I know that our Department is partnering with some of your scientists and engineers to perform research on combustion technology, under the auspices of the DOE-funded multi-university Advanced Combustion Consortium that is coordinated by the University of Michigan.
In addition to academia, we also need the cooperation of our friends in the private sector. So I am very pleased that we are joined today by several distinguished representatives from the automotive industry.
The D.O.E. is actively engaged with the nation's automakers in Detroit to make our transportation sector cleaner, more efficient, and less dependent on imported petroleum. The capstone of these efforts is our FreedomCar and Fuel Partnership. I should mention that Larry Burns of GM and Gerhard Schmidt of Ford -- whom I acknowledged earlier -- are both on the Executive Steering Committee of FreedomCar and I want to thank them for their time and their efforts.
FreedomCar is a public/private partnership that focuses on pursuing the high-risk research needed to develop the necessary technologies, such as hydrogen fuel cells and other advanced propulsion systems, that will provide a full range of affordable cars and light trucks -- free of foreign oil and harmful emissions, and that do not sacrifice freedom of mobility or freedom of vehicle choice.
That brings me to the announcement I want to make today. One of the best options we have today for reducing gasoline consumption is the hybrid vehicle-- which runs on a combination of a traditional engine and an electric battery. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles allow the battery to be charged through a regular electric power outlet and with a range of up to 40 miles on battery power before switching to gas, many drivers who commute a relatively short distance can drive to and from work every day without using any gasoline at all.
Only a handful of vehicles have been converted to plug-in use within the last year. But that means there is enormous room for growth here. To further enhance the efficiency and lower the cost of plug-ins, and to speed the commercialization of these cars, our Department this week is releasing a outline "Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle Technology Management Plan," which will guide our Research and Development efforts over the next few years. We are opening the roadmap to public review so that we can gain helpful feedback from engineers, industry, consumer groups and others that will allow us to better focus our efforts.
Another technology that we are very excited about is something called cellulosic ethanol -- which involves making ethanol from a much wider variety of agricultural sources besides corn, including waste products such as wood chips or corn stalks.We know this can be done, because nature knows very well how to break down cellulose, the fibrous part of plants. The tiny microbes in the gut of the termite, for example, have been doing this very effectively for millions of years. Cellulose will break down into sugars. Once you have sugars, of course, nature turns those sugars into ethanol (in fact it's the ethanol produced by microbes that gives a glass of champagne its kick).
Our goal is to tap the secrets of these natural processes and harness them. The really tough challenge is converting cellulose to sugars cost-effectively. The trick is to find the right microbe to interact with the right biomass source. We will likely need to match the bug to the plant by genetically re-engineering both.
But to figure all that out will require a substantial investment in cutting-edge high-risk/high-return basic research. So we are backing 3 innovative bioenergy research centers that we hope will achieve significant breakthroughs in systems biology for the cost-effective production of renewable energy. In other words, we hope to put the biotech industry - arguably America's most competitive industry - to work not just on drug development but on our energy problems.
Our Department's 2008 budget requests $75 million -- $25 million for each center -- to fund what we hope or expect will be consortiums of the best people from universities, countrywide laboratories, nonprofit organizations and private firms. The multidisciplinary teams in these bioenergy research centers will be applying the latest advances in biotechnology, studying both microbial processes and the plants themselves, down to the molecular level.
One of the reasons I am so excited and so optimistic about this Plan is that it is not merely a government-only effort. It is building on the very strong momentum we are seeing in the private sector toward alternative energy technologies.
In fact, there is today more interest by venture capitalists in clean energy technology than I have seen in my lifetime. Already, they are investing billions of dollars each year, and are poised to invest even more -- which is going to significantly boost the future of clean energy in this country.
Perhaps the most striking example of this is the recent announcement by BP that they are making a $500 million investment, in partnership with our Department's Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, the University of California, and the University of Illinois to fund an Energy Biosciences Institute. This Plan is very similar to the 3 Energy Department-funded bioenergy centers I mentioned a moment ago. I am not concerned about the competition. In fact, I welcome it. It will push everyone to work harder; it will make the research more competitive; and, frankly, there are so many promising technologies out there that there is in excess of enough work to go around.
The thing I am slightly worried about is whether this nation will continue to have the scientists and engineers we will need to carry this work forward into the future. Some of the technologies I've been discussing are already with us; some are just around the corner. But other aspects of our energy challenges will take longer, and will have to be solved by men and women who are undergraduates or high school students today. And its not just energy issues that will require a scientifically trained workforce. With each passing year, our economic prosperity becomes more and more intertwined with our leadership in science and technology. But the leadership we enjoy now -- and the economic competitiveness that depends on that leadership -- can't be taken for granted. So to complement the Advanced Energy Initiative I mentioned earlier, the President has suggested an American Competitiveness Initiative. In the budget we are proposing to Congress for 2008, our Department is requesting $4.4 billion, an increase of approximately $300 million over the 2007 request -- to fund the basic research in the physical sciences that is already under way at place like our Countrywide Laboratories; but also to support an array of science and technology education programs.
And that brings me back to how I began these remarks: the importance of schools like the University of Michigan and research facilities like the Phoenix Institute.
More and more, I notice that the students at America's leading research universities are voting with their feet -- and energy is the leader; the focus of the day. So it is entirely appropriate that this Institute has been built on the work of the earlier Phoenix Project; but in a way that brings the energy challenge up to date, as something that captures the interest and imagination of today's students, and tomorrow's scientists and engineers.
We are still pursuing the peaceful uses of the atom, as we should, but today we are also finding ways to meet our energy needs through the peaceful and productive, and efficient uses of the corn stalk the hydrogen fuel cell the lithium-ion battery the photovoltaic solar cell and perhaps, some day, the miraculous workings of the microbes in a termite's gut.
With that, let me thank you again for your kind invitation to be with you today and share some thoughts with you.
Now I would be happen to answer any questions you may have.
