*EPF507 06/25/2004
Text: Technology Will Overcome Climate Change, Abraham Says
(Energy secretary outlines strategy to develop cleaner energy sources) (4470)

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham says the United States is pursuing "transformational technologies" that will help meet energy needs in cleaner, nonpolluting ways.

The administration's energy technology priorities focus on six principal areas of research and development: hydrogen, clean coal, safe nuclear power, fusion, energy efficiency and renewable energy.

"Together, and over the long term, I believe they have the potential to overcome our climate change concerns altogether," said Abraham.

Speaking at a Washington conference June 24, he said that establishing international partnerships to bring greater resources and more ideas to the pursuit of these technologies is another important element in the Bush administration strategy.

In pursuit of hydrogen technology development, the United States has brought 14 nations and the European Union together in a joint initiative that will form "a comprehensive global framework on which to structure hydrogen research and development," Abraham said.

The United States and its partners recognize hydrogen as one of the most promising sources for development, Abraham said. "It has a high energy content, it produces no pollution when used to create energy in fuel cells, and it can be produced from a number of different sources, including renewable resources, fossil fuels, and nuclear energy," he said.

The U.S. government and the private sector are working together on a Clean Coal Power Initiative in order to create the world's first zero-emissions fossil-fueled power plant, Abraham said. "It will be a living prototype, testing the latest technologies to generate electricity, produce hydrogen, and sequester greenhouse gas emissions from coal."

A multinational partnership is also at work to "develop new nuclear fission reactor designs that will be safer, more economical and secure," the energy secretary said. He said discussions with other world energy leaders have led him to the conclusion that nuclear energy is an important future source for clean energy. At the same time, he acknowledged that the concerns expressed by critics in the past must be addressed through better plant design.

The Bush administration has developed a national energy strategy, which relies on many sources, Abraham said, and the wind and the sun are among them. "The United States is the leading producer and consumer of renewable energy today," he said.

Following is the text of Abraham's remarks as prepared for delivery:

(begin text)

June 24, 2004

"U.S. Climate Policy: Toward a Sensible Center" Conference, Brookings Institution

Statement Prepared for Energy Secretary Abraham

Thank you, David. It is a great pleasure to be here.

Let me begin by saying how much I appreciate your interest in the issue of climate change. Today, I would like to explain how our Administration, and in particular the Department of Energy [DOE], looks at this set of issues. And in doing so, perhaps I can help identify one way by which we can find common ground for future national and international focus.

As many of you know, during our first year in office, our Administration conducted an in-depth study of climate-related issues. We determined that action was needed. As the President said, "We must address the issue of global climate change. We must also act in a serious and responsible way, given the scientific uncertainties. While these uncertainties remain, we can begin now to address the human factors that contribute to climate change. Wise action now is an insurance policy against future risks."

We also realized that, ultimately, major progress in reducing GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions could not occur-consistent with a strong economy-absent the development of very significant new technologies to transform how we produce and use energy.

The United States has a Gross Domestic Product of $11 trillion, with a desired rate of growth of at least three to four percent. That means that we will unavoidably continue to generate substantial greenhouse gas emissions-despite pursuing greater energy efficiency and the use of alternative fuels-so long as we use traditional or conventional technological approaches.

The challenge is even more pronounced in many developing countries, which are moving toward an explosive burst in energy demand, but lack many of the efficiency measures we have deployed here in the United States.

Ultimately, then, the only possible path to offset these likely GHG increases is by developing truly transformational technologies that will bring us into an entirely new energy age. This is true, because no nation is prepared to trade economic growth, to mortgage its prosperity, for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

This science and technology model, then, is at the core of the approach we have taken toward climate policy, and President Bush has tasked my Department with the lead responsibility for its implementation.

For the past two years, we have been moving aggressively to advance our effort. On the one hand, we have been determining which technological priorities we should establish, and aggressively launching or enlarging initiatives in these areas. On the other hand, we have concluded that these science and technology efforts are best advanced through international cooperation, both because it will speed the advancement of breakthroughs, and also help facilitate the global adoption of new technologies in an expedited fashion.

I would now like to spend some time discussing our policies on both fronts.

Our Department has put considerable thought and deliberation into energy technology priorities, and our view is that six principal areas deserve the greatest attention. I call them the six pillars of collaborative climate research. They are: hydrogen, clean coal, safe nuclear power, fusion, energy efficiency and renewable energy.

President Bush's Hydrogen Initiative is the first element of our climate strategy. In his 2003 State of the Union speech the President announced his groundbreaking plan to change our nation's energy future to one that utilizes this most abundant element in the universe.

The United States is committed to spending $1.7 billion, in just the first five years, to fund the ambitious FreedomCAR and Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, which will develop emission-free automotive operating systems that run on hydrogen. As the President said last year, "With a new national commitment, our scientists and engineers will overcome obstacles to taking these cars from laboratory to showroom, so that the first car driven by a child born today could be fueled by hydrogen and pollution free."

We are making good progress toward seeing that happen. In April, I was pleased to announce $350 million in nation-wide funding for science and research projects to help establish a hydrogen economy. These funds are being matched by an additional $225 million from the private sector to advance the President's goal.

Hydrogen represents one of the most attractive options to meet both our energy and environmental goals. It has a high energy content, it produces no pollution when used to create energy in fuel cells, and it can be produced from a number of different sources, including renewable resources, fossil fuels, and nuclear energy.

In the spring of last year, I went to Europe to brief foreign leaders about our hydrogen plan. I met with heads of state, fellow ministers, and representatives from industry and academia to come up with ways we could work together on hydrogen. At the International Energy Agency in Paris, the United States proposed forming an international hydrogen effort. It was our belief that such a consortium could accelerate the international push to the hydrogen economy by institutionalizing joint research and pooling resources. In all these settings, we have met with incredible enthusiasm.

As a result, in November 2003, we hosted Ministers representing 14 nations and the European Commission to formally establish the International Partnership for the Hydrogen Economy. This consortium consists not just of the Western, industrialized nations, but also includes India and China-the two countries with the fastest-growing energy demand-along with the Russian Federation, Brazil, and virtually all the major automobile-producing nations.

This partnership, then, is a comprehensive global framework on which to structure hydrogen research and development. It is an ambitious joint venture breaking new ground in hydrogen cooperation, and is built on the hope and expectation that a participating country's consumers will have the practical option of purchasing a competitively priced hydrogen powered vehicle, and be able to refuel it near their homes and places of work, by 2020. If our plans are successful, by 2040, hydrogen could replace more than 11 million barrels of oil per day in America alone-almost the equivalent of current U.S. oil imports.

The second pillar of our plan is clean coal.

As you know, coal is our most abundant fuel, but it is also a major factor in greenhouse gas emissions. Our Administration's Clean Coal Research Initiative is an ambitious 10-year, $2 billion program to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy while also substantially reducing GHG emissions and pollutants.

The key element of that effort is the Clean Coal Power Initiative-a cost-shared program between government and industry to quickly demonstrate emerging technologies in coal-based power generation, and to accelerate their commercialization. By working with industry, we won't just be sharing the costs and risks of cutting-edge research and development... we will actually be moving technologies, which might otherwise remain in the laboratory, into useful production.

In the first phase of project funding, more than $250 million is being awarded by the Department of Energy, with additional private sector contributions of just over $670 million, to identify and overcome the most critical barriers to coal's environmental performance in the power sector.

The second phase of the Clean Coal Power Initiative is now under way.We are currently soliciting the next round of project proposals and plan to announce new awards of approximately $280 million in September. I want to emphasize that these awards are not just a one-time infusion into clean coal technology, but a major, ongoing process to make clean coal power plants a permanent and substantial part of our nation's energy mix. Our plan calls for disbursing about $250 to $300 million in grants, in roughly two-year cycles over the 10 years of the President's program, for a total of $1.5 billion in new funding for clean coal efforts.

This effort will go an especially long way toward perfecting the technology for coal gasification. Unlike the comparatively messy process of simply burning coal, gasification breaks coal down into its chemical components, allowing us to more easily capture the carbon emissions that lead to GHG build-up, as well as efficiently generate electricity and produce clean-burning hydrogen.

That leads me to what is perhaps the most exciting aspect of our Clean Coal Initiative: the FutureGen program-a cost-shared, $950 million project to create the world's first zero-emissions fossil fueled power plant. FutureGen will be one of the boldest steps our nation takes toward a pollution-free energy future. Virtually every aspect of the plant will be based on cutting-edge technology. It will be a living prototype, testing the latest technologies to generate electricity, produce hydrogen, and sequester greenhouse gas emissions from coal. FutureGen will help lead to the development of clean fossil fuel power plants all across the world. It will allow this abundant and economical fuel source to continue producing energy without its traditional environmental side-effects.

For FutureGen to succeed as a zero-emissions plant, and to make coal a genuinely clean energy source, we must perfect the technology for carbon sequestration. In fact, carbon sequestration has emerged as one of the highest priorities in our Department's Fossil Energy research program.

In November of 2002, we announced plans to create a national network of public-private sector partnerships that would determine the most suitable technologies, regulations, and infrastructure needs for carbon capture, storage and sequestration in different areas of the country.

Last year, following a competitive evaluation, our Department named seven partnerships of state agencies, universities, and private companies to form the core of this nationwide sequestration network. The partnerships include more than 150 organizations spanning 40 states, three Indian nations, and two Canadian provinces.

To support this enhanced carbon sequestration effort, we have increased our requested funding from $20 million in 2002, to almost $50 million in FY [fiscal year] 2005. And we intend to carry that effort forward for a decade, or more, until we are successful.

Because there is still more work to be done, we've formed a cooperative, international partnership for pooling costs and research efforts called the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum.

The international charter for the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum, a Bush Administration initiative, was signed one year ago. Today, 15 nations from five continents, plus the European Commission, are part of this global effort to facilitate the development of improved and cost-effective technologies for the separation and capture of carbon dioxide. The Forum's goals include research on the transport and long-term safe storage of carbon emissions; efforts to make these technologies broadly available internationally; and finding ways to identify and address wider issues relating to carbon capture and storage. This could include promoting the appropriate technical, political, and regulatory environments for the development of such technology. The Forum held a meeting of the Policy and Technical Committees in Rome last January to advance this partnership, and earlier this month met again in London to discuss stakeholder participation.

What will all this do for us? Where will it take us? Our goal-which we are working hard to achieve-is clean coal power technology that within the next six years produces 40 percent fewer carbon emissions, and by the year 2020 achieves reductions to nearly half the current levels. Beyond that, if we can successfully complete FutureGen by perfecting the technology of carbon sequestration, we will be looking at coal power generation with practically zero emissions of carbon into the atmosphere.

The third pillar of our plan involves new generation nuclear energy. Obviously, there has been considerable debate going on for a long time about nuclear energy. Proponents and opponents have each had their victories and setbacks. This has led, of course, to a very disparate pattern of nuclear power usage in the world. Our conclusion at the Department of Energy is that nuclear energy needs to be part of the overall mix, for a variety of reasons-in part, because we want to avoid becoming too dependent on any particular fuel, or on imported energy, and also because nuclear power simply has such great capacity to provide clean energy.

In my conversations with leaders in foreign countries-including, I would note, those who are Kyoto signatories, and even countries where the nuclear power sector is not today in ascent -there is a growing sense that nuclear energy will be pivotal if we are to successfully address greenhouse gas emissions.

Assuming that is the case, it seems imperative that we work to address the safety and proliferation concerns of those who have opposed nuclear energy. That is what we are trying to do.

To that end, we are engaged in a strenuous effort to develop the most cutting-edge technology for nuclear power generation. At the forefront of that effort is an international collaboration, of which the U.S. is an enthusiastic member, called the Generation IV program. This multi-lateral project includes 11 international partners working to develop new fission reactor designs that will be safer, more economical and secure, and able to produce new products, such as hydrogen. Through this effort, we are pooling scientific expertise and sharing ideas in order to design the nuclear reactors of the future.

This Gen IV reactor program holds the promise of cost effective and greenhouse-gas-free production of both hydrogen and electricity from nuclear energy by the year 2020.

The fourth pillar of our strategy is fusion. Fusion power itself is one of those future technologies, driven by success in basic research, that could truly transform the world's energy equation. From an inexhaustible and entirely clean fuel source, a fusion plant could generate huge amounts of electricity during the day to power mega-cities ... and at night produce hydrogen for transportation needs-with no emissions of greenhouse gases. It carries with it-comparatively speaking-virtually no security concerns with respect to proliferation, and it produces no long-term waste.

That is why, in early 2003, the President determined that we needed to bring fusion to the forefront of America's long-term energy plan. At his direction, we joined our partners Japan, China, Russia, the Republic of Korea, and the European Union to develop ITER [International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor], a major international fusion experiment. ITER is a long-term, multi-billion dollar project to develop nuclear fusion as a future energy source. My Department regards this effort so highly that we have made ITER our number one facilities priority. In addition, the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences has endorsed our efforts with ITER, and we are very excited about pursing this.

This is a huge project, and the first operational experiments would not take place until early in the next decade. But if those tests are successful, ITER can prove the feasibility of fusion energy.

We do not know for certain if we can realize fusion's potential. We do know that it is our responsibility to try.

Many of these technologies I have just discussed will only be developed over the long term. Some will not be realized for another 10 to 15 years. Some may take 30, or even 50, years.

So it is not enough to rely only on new technology breakthroughs. It is important that we make the most of the technologies that we have available today for reducing GHG emissions. That is why we are promoting energy efficiency and renewable energy both now and for the future. I see these as the final pillars of our plan.

Energy efficiency and renewable energy are not afterthoughts in my Department. In fact, our current funding request for these programs exceeds funding levels enacted by Congress during any of the 20 years prior to the Bush Administration.

These funds support a variety of efficiency programs for homes, schools and businesses, as well as the Federal Energy Management Program, which promotes conservation and efficiency efforts in the federal government-the largest energy consumer in the United States.

We are also working to improve the effectiveness of our renewable energy programs. DOE research and development has brought down the effective cost of renewable technology by a factor of 10 or more over the past 20 years. In some areas of the country, wind-generated electricity is becoming competitive with electricity generated by natural gas. And we are determined to bring down the cost of wind, solar, biomass and geothermal even more.

I think that it bears mentioning that the United States is the leading producer and consumer of renewable energy today. According to the International Energy Agency, the United States had over 116 gigawatts of installed renewable energy capacity in 2001. This is greater than the amount of renewable energy generation capacity in Germany, Denmark, Sweden, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom combined.

My point is not to boast. In fact, part of our success can be attributed to the bi-lateral agreements my Department has signed with other nations to promote shared resources and mutual cooperation in these areas. Just last month in the U.K., Minister Timms and I signed the "Efficient Energy for Sustainable Development Partnership," to improve the productivity and efficiency of energy systems.

Complementing all these efforts is our Climate VISION program, a presidential initiative launched by the Energy Department in February 2003, which is designed to reduce the growth of greenhouse gas emissions by energy-intensive industrial sectors. Participants in the program, which account for between 40 and 45 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, have already agreed to meet specific commitments to reduce their industry emissions, and to use their successes to help others reduce their GHG impacts. The Climate VISION program works with industry trade associations to accelerate the transition to practices, technologies, and processes that are cleaner, more efficient, and capable of capturing or sequestering greenhouse gases.

Clean coal, hydrogen, safe nuclear power, fusion, energy efficiency and renewable energy. These are the six pillars we have established in our Department to meet our growing future energy needs while also aggressively confronting the challenge of climate change.

Each of these areas holds greats promise. Each is fully integrated into a collaborative, multi-national effort to bring science and technology to bear upon meeting our energy needs. Each area, as it progresses, will bring us closer to reducing GHG emissions. Together, and over the long term, I believe they have the potential to overcome our climate change concerns altogether.

But while those six pillars seem to hold the most promise today, and are the ones we are currently focused on, we certainly don't rule out the possibility of other new technologies emerging as we learn new things.

For example, there is our Genomes to Life initiative. We are just at the beginning stage of this remarkable effort, which carries the prospect of microbial organisms that actually eat pollution. Genomes to Life is an outgrowth of the Human Genome Project that our Department launched back in the mid 1980s.

Using the knowledge gained by the Human Genome Project, we are confident that the Genomes to Life program will perfect genetic techniques to harness microbes to consume pollution, create hydrogen, and absorb carbon dioxide.

Another promising technology is supercomputing. Recently I announced our plans to build the fastest supercomputer in the world that will be open to all users.

We are making this significant investment in our scientific infrastructure with the expectation that it will yield a wealth of dividends -- major research breakthroughs in virtually every area of science today. We can use supercomputers to simulate a design for an efficient and environmentally benign coal burning boiler, or a super-clean diesel engine, or a radically improved gas turbine for generating electricity. Today, in fact, scientists regard computers not just as a tool to crunch numbers, but as a tool for discovery that is just as important as experimentation.

All of this obviously has a price. Let me just give you a sense of the level of investment our Administration has made. In my Department alone, we are devoting $2.4 billion to climate change technology this year. Of that amount, almost $800 million-about a third-consists of new Bush Administration initiatives. Other climate change programs, at the Commerce Department and elsewhere, represent an additional $2.5 billion. That means that altogether, over the next five years, our Administration is committing $25 billion to research and develop technologies to solve our GHG problems. No other nation is spending anything close to these amounts.

Moreover, everything I have just mentioned is just the investment by the public sector in climate change programs. There is, of course, an immense effort under way in the American private sector as well -- to improve energy efficiency, develop new technologies, and mitigate GHG emissions.

And our non-profit sector is also pitching in. Let me mention a research effort going on at Stanford University. The Global Climate and Energy Project hosted there is dedicated to developing pre-commercial research on technologies that would foster the development of a global energy system with low greenhouse emissions. Much of its sponsorship is private industry, including $100 million from ExxonMobil, and $50 million each from General Electric and Toyota. And that is far from the only research project of its kind.

So that is what the United States is doing. Of course people will continue to debate whether this is enough, or whether these are the right emphases. But at the end of the day, I find that there is one common thread in my discussions, wherever I travel. Whether I am speaking to officials in countries that are Kyoto signatories, or in places that are not... whether they are major, developed countries, or small developing ones... they all agree that we need a collaborative, international focus on the major transformational energy technologies before us. They all agree that science and technology are the keys to solving our problems.

This idea, then, of a collaborative, science-based model for addressing climate change is, in my view, the most promising vehicle available to allow us to move past the debates and actually get about the job of significantly reducing GHG emissions.

Clearly, I am putting a lot of faith in the power of technology to achieve our goals. Let me tell you why I think this is justified. A hundred years ago, before the invention of the automobile, people were becoming increasingly alarmed at the growing numbers of horses in cities like New York. Horses were the only practical means of transportation. But they were big and smelly, and were stabled on every block, next to homes and businesses. They required vast acres of farmland dedicated to growing feed. And every one of them produced several pounds of manure per day-often in very inconvenient places. All in all, they presented serious environmental hazards and health concerns. Yet, as the cities grew, so did the unavoidable need for even more horses, so that some people worried whether cities would even be habitable within a few years. Then, along came Henry Ford, and everything changed.

Who could have predicted that?

Who of us could have predicted the miraculous changes wrought by the Internet? The truth is, all we know about the world 50 or 100 years from now is that it will be vastly different from the one we inhabit today. In the 22nd century, we will likely produce and consume energy in ways that we cannot imagine today. And the six pillars for international energy technology cooperation I think we should pursue today, may look quaint to our descendants... as a Model-T does to us. But Ford's Model-T changed the world. And I like to think that in our national laboratories we have other Henry Fords who will also change the world.

To vindicate that hope, and to meet the climate challenges we face today, requires that we press forward with cutting edge science and technology.

I am proud of the work we are doing, at the Department of Energy and throughout our Administration.

And I am confident that if we do not flag in our commitment, we will find even more potential-discover even greater possibilities-for creating a safer, cleaner, better world for future generations... a world in which greenhouse gas emissions will be as quaint and distant a memory as the urban horse hazards of a century ago.

Thank you.

Washington, DC

(end text)

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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