Remarks Prepared for Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham
Thank you for that generous introduction … it’s good to be back in London and it’s especially nice to return to Chatham House.
I would like to take this opportunity to discuss one of the central questions of our time, and that is the question of how the world should address the profound energy challenges it will face in the 21st century.
This group understands better than most the outlines of these challenges.
The demand for oil is increasing, not just in the United States and Great Britain but around the world, particularly in rapidly growing economies in nations like China and India. The global demand for natural gas is also growing strongly, and we expect to see pressure on this resource increase as well.
Of particular concern is the fact that we expect to see demand for energy, and especially electric energy, accelerate in the large population centers of the Third World. There, we will see a requirement for large … very large … power production facilities as increased population joins with a growing world economy to put more and more stress on energy supplies.
Tied to the growing demand for energy is a host of environmental challenges, from air pollution and its effects on human health to questions about global climate change.
Finding a path to meet the dual challenges of energy security and environmental stewardship will require global cooperation.
Where better to discuss the ways and means of international cooperation than here at Chatham House. And frankly, who better to engage in such a conversation than we … the Americans and the British … two nations that fashioned an alliance that, for all the challenges we have faced, must be seen as perhaps the most resilient and successful in history.
Now it seems clear, as we think about meeting the energy challenges that confront us, that no matter what regulatory model one adopts ... no matter how we structure our economies … we will simply be unable to find and employ the energy we need in an environmentally acceptable manner without breakthroughs … major breakthroughs … in science and technology.
Indeed, whether one wishes to extend the usefulness of fossil fuels well into this century, extend the use of nuclear fission reactors, move toward renewables such as wind, biomass, and solar power, or fuel the world with fusion reactors, no matter your preference, the common thread in realizing each future energy vision is some kind of major advance in science and technology.
It also seems clear that no single nation can be assumed to have either the financial resources, or more importantly, the human ingenuity, to generate … on its own … the kind of scientific advances that will be needed to meet the world’s demand for increasing amounts of energy.
What is needed is a global science and technology model for future energy needs.
This is what we are pursuing in the Bush Administration.
We believe the global energy challenge demands a global science and technology response … one that includes work on technology development that will be useful in the short term … and also one that includes far-reaching fundamental scientific research that may only bear fruit in the time frame of half a century or more.
Under President Bush we have invested more in science, technology, and basic research than at any time in history, with the possible exception of the extraordinary effort put forth in the 1960s to put a man on the moon. The President’s 2005 budget requests $132 billion for scientific and technological research and development, a 44 percent increase since George Bush took office. In fact, non-defense R&D is the highest percentage of GDP since 1982. And today we are spending $5 billion per year on climate change alone, more than the rest of the industrialized world.
Across the Administration, we are pursuing initiatives that, if realized, will help us leapfrog today’s energy challenges.
And they point us toward a day when the thorniest problems we now face are looked back on with nostalgia, all because we devised fantastic scientific and technological wonders that rendered those problems moot.
So I ask you … to imagine a day when the enormous energy requirements of large industrial centers throughout the world will be met by a power plant fueled by little more than sea water and that produces virtually no harmful emissions.
Or to imagine a day when scientists use super-intense light – even more intense than the sun – to investigate the smallest particles known to man in an effort to devise 21st century fuels.
Or to imagine a day when computers the size of a grain of sand are performing millions of calculations per second, providing avenues for controlling and monitoring energy use that will revolutionize energy efficiency.
Or to imagine a day when specially designed microbes eat the pollution and carbon dioxide from a coal fired power plant.
These … and indeed other wonders … can be realized if we, the nations with the know-how and resources, invest today in the scientists and scientific facilities that can develop revolutionary ways to power our homes, businesses, schools, and automobiles.
Let me take a few moments to review the steps the Bush Administration – and the Department of Energy in particular – already are taking in that regard … programs that are transforming the way we produce and use energy.
Our Department is spearheading efforts to speed the coming of the hydrogen economy. By working to develop automotive systems that run on hydrogen-powered fuel cells, and the infrastructure to support them, we will increase our energy independence while safeguarding the environment.
Last year the Department made an initial investment of $1.7 billion over five years to kick off an accelerated effort aimed at getting hydrogen fuel cell powered cars and advanced vehicles into showrooms and onto the roads by the end of the next decade.
Just last month, we announced the first $350 million in grants and awards to partners in industry, government, and academia for large-scale hydrogen demonstration projects. These grants back up what we’ve been saying about hydrogen, and show our commitment to action and achievement.
We are moving forward on hydrogen internationally as well. Last November, the United States hosted the inaugural meeting of the International Partnership for the Hydrogen Economy.
We brought together 15 countries and the European Commission to work on fuel cells and other energy technologies of the future.
That meeting was a success, and has helped launch widespread international cooperation on research for fuel cell high-temperature membranes, hydrogen storage materials, and renewable energy hydrogen production. The IPHE encourages all the nations interested in hydrogen to pool scarce resources, to have our scientists and engineers share knowledge, and to lay important pre-competitive groundwork, like developing interoperable codes and standards.
Another program we are very excited about is our plan to build an entirely clean coal fired power plant.
The United States has 250 years worth of coal reserves. Nations like Russia, China, India, Australia, and, of course, the United Kingdom, similarly will use coal for large portions of their electricity generation in the years ahead. The challenge, therefore, is to find a way to allow us and others to use coal, but to do so in a manner that safeguards the environment and reduces greenhouse gases.
That’s why we launched the FutureGen project last year.
FutureGen is a 10-year, $1 billion program to create the world’s first zero-emissions fossil fuel plant. When operational, it will be the cleanest fossil fueled power plant in the world.
Virtually every aspect of the FutureGen prototype plant will employ cutting-edge technology. Rather than using traditional coal combustion technology, it will rely on coal gasification. And because of this advanced process, we envision that FutureGen also will be able to produce large amounts of transportation-grade hydrogen fuel.
Because of the obvious international application of FutureGen, we are opening it up to global participation, and we hope to establish a number of partnerships with other nations soon.
A related technology we are pursuing to ensure the continued use of coal is carbon sequestration.
Carbon sequestration – the process of removing carbon dioxide from fossil fuel emissions streams and permanently storing it in deep underground formations – can allow the world to continue using affordable fossil fuels like coal without adverse environmental impacts.
Last June, we brought together representatives from 13 countries to form the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum and build on international interest in this sort of work. This global consortium has already begun investigating ways to sequester greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels.
The Department of Energy is also working on advanced technologies to improve nuclear power generation. The United States is a very active member of the Generation IV international nuclear energy consortium. This group seeks to develop technologies that improve safety performance, waste reduction, and proliferation resistance while providing a nuclear energy option that is economically competitive and ready for deployment before 2030. Our nuclear scientists at the Argonne National Laboratory and the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory plan to have one or more reactor designs certified by 2030, in time to replace reactors built in the United States during the 1970s and 1980s.
Complementing these activities is our Department’s work promoting energy efficiency and renewable energy. The Department oversees a multitude of programs designed to come up with ways to use current energy sources more economically, and to develop technologies such as wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass to help us meet our energy and environmental goals. This year we are seeking more, in nominal dollars, for these programs than Congress provided last year or any prior year in the last two decades.
I am particularly proud that our two governments just signed two agreements – the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership last month, and the Efficient Energy for Sustainable Development Partnership earlier today – that will work to improve the efficiency and productivity of energy systems and will enhance renewable energy’s price competitiveness and market penetration.
Taken together, the global scope of all these initiatives signals a powerful commitment on the part of the Bush Administration to address demands for clean, abundant, and affordable energy that all nations require.
But even these steps will fall short unless we nurture the kind of basic scientific research that pushes technology forward. Look around you, from your desktop computer to medical imaging technology, and you will see the fruits of fundamental research.
But this kind of research demands foresight and investment in the future. It demands that we build the research facilities that modern interdisciplinary science requires. And it demands that we encourage the next generation to take up science as a career, or at the very least to become scientifically literate citizens.
We at the Department of Energy are very serious about the responsibility we have to the future of science.
Just last week, 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, significant technological innovations, and medical and health advances.
But we are also making this investment because we recognize that supercomputing underpins virtually everything that happens in 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.
Our supercomputer initiative is one of the lead programs in the Department’s 20 year roadmap for future scientific facilities that I announced last November.
Our facilities plan sets out the major opportunities for scientific discovery that we see unfolding over the next two decades. This blueprint for the future of science presents a prioritized list of 28 new facilities, or upgrades to existing facilities, that we believe hold the greatest promise for advancing the frontiers of science and technology.
Another top priority on that list is a good example of what I noted earlier about the absolute necessity for international cooperation on science as together we seek to meet the world’s energy demands.
The international fusion project known as ITER – the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor – will, if successful, provide us the final experiment before we move to build a demonstration fusion power plant.
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. It carries with it – comparatively speaking – virtually no security concerns with respect to proliferation, and it produces no long-term waste.
We do not know, of course, if we can realize fusion’s potential. We do know that it is our responsibility to try.
I do not want to list or discuss all the science machines we are thinking about … they cover the waterfront of opportunities in chemistry, biology, high energy, nuclear physics, and materials science … but I do want to emphasize how this facilities plan and the other work we are now doing might impact the energy mission of my department and transform the way we fuel the economy of the 21st century.
Take just one example in the area of materials. The Department is now building five nanoscience centers at our National Laboratories. Each of these will work on different aspects of this new area of study, but the overall goal is the same … to build new materials, atom-by-atom, and provide revolutionary ways to address some of the most vexing energy production challenges.
Fusion will require advances in materials, as will our next generation of nuclear reactor. It is hoped that advances in nanoscience will provide us with true breakthroughs in fuel cell technology as well as huge boosts in the efficiency of solar power.
Everywhere you look in the energy field, you will see ways that progress in fundamental materials science can have a tremendous impact.
That is why we have built the Spallation Neutron Source, and are even now planning its upgrades some three years before it comes on line. The SNS … as we call it … will provide the world’s most intense supply of neutrons for scientists to study and engineer materials. Automobile frames with twice the strength and half the weight, new super-efficient materials for electricity transmission, these are just a few of the possibilities we could see realized from this major scientific project.
And so it is with so much of the Department’s scientific work. Earlier, I asked you to imagine some futuristic sounding possibilities. In truth, that future is not so far off.
Our fusion researchers, for instance, are drawing up plans for a fusion energy plant powered by seawater.
Our Advanced Light Source, housed in Berkeley, California, is a facility that generates intense light for scientific and technological research. How intense? It produces light in the x-ray region of the electromagnetic spectrum that is one billion times brighter than the sun – something that makes previously impossible studies possible.
Our nanoscience researchers are coming up with marvels that are truly the stuff of science fiction novels. Already we’ve seen advances that include laptop computers more powerful than the mainframe systems that supported the Apollo lunar missions … composites ten times as strong as steel … and the ability to engineer genes, visualize individual atoms, and put lasers on chips for portable CD players. One must naturally conclude that future nanoscience advances – like the microscopic computers I mentioned earlier – will be even more fantastic.
And, finally, our Genomes to Life program offers the truly amazing prospect of microbial organisms that actually eat pollution. Genomes to Life is an outgrowth of the Human Genome Project that DOE launched back in the mid 1980s – something for which, I might add, we are seldom given credit.
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.
This is not simply wishful thinking. We have seen so many times in the past how investments in science and technology can create entirely new industries and provide solutions to problems that seemed beyond our reach.
But as we look at modern science, we see that oftentimes … as in the case of ITER and other critical areas … international cooperation is essential.
Science machines are often too costly for any one nation to go it alone. And obviously, given the multidisciplinary nature of science today, talent from every nation must be pooled if research is to be given its best chance to succeed.
Each of the nations of the world – from the most advanced, like Great Britain and the United States, to developing nations – faces, in some form or another, similar energy and environmental challenges for the future.
It is obvious, then, that we are best served by viewing our energy challenges as common challenges … which can be met by working together to develop common solutions.
Focused science and technology … cutting edge research and development … heightened international cooperation … this is the path to energy and environmental security in the 21st century.
As the worldwide demand for energy grows – and it must if the world’s economy is to continue to grow – then we have to press forward with advances in science and technology.
The history of modern civilization is a story of mankind solving great problems by developing and applying revolutionary new technologies. Airplanes drastically shortened distances. Telegraph and telephone lines enabled instant communication all over the world. Medical technologies have saved and extended countless lives.
The 21st century, I am convinced, will see the same happen for energy and the environment.
But only if we take the right steps now … working together to build greater international science collaborations, and making our own serious commitments to investments in basic research … steps that will engage the machinery of scientific and technological advancement crucial to overcoming today’s challenges and transforming the world of tomorrow.
Thank you.
