Good evening and thank you for being here. I'm very excited about tonight, because this is not just another reception. Tonight is special because we are launching something that I hope everyone here will be a part of.

By now many of you have heard that the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm is going to focus, during my tenure, on expanding cooperation between the U.S. and Sweden in the area of alternative energy. Our goal - and I know it's a big one - is to help achieve a technological breakthrough that will allow both countries to reduce dependence on fossil fuels while also achieving benefits for the global environment. This is what I call the One Big Thing.

I think there are some people in this room who helped me decide to focus on this topic: members of the American Chamber of Commerce; Jacob Wallenberg; Peter Wallenberg; Jan and Kerstin Eliasson; and many others.

In the past few weeks, I've been telling people in Sweden about this initiative. I tell them that I'm concerned about global warming and that we need to find clean alternatives to fossil fuels. And Swedes sometimes say to me, "Have you checked with Washington on this? Are you sure this is OK with that Texas oilman in the White House?" I can confirm that this is 100% OK with George W. Bush. Contrary to popular perceptions, the President does recognize the problem of global warming and our responsibility to act to solve it.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 and the Advanced Energy Initiative launched in 2006 demonstrate the President's commitment to alternative energy. He has devoted $10 billion to research and development in the area of alternative fuels, and he has called for a 30% reduction in U.S. fossil fuel use by the year 2030. In his press conference following the elections last week, he identified energy as an area for cooperation with the new Democratic Congress. We are already well on the way to meeting some of the President's objectives. For example, the Energy Policy Act called for the U.S. to triple the use of biofuels, to 7.5 billion tons, by 2012. In 2006 we'll reach 5 billion tons. We doubled ethanol use in just one year.

Prime Minister Reinfeld announced last week that jobs and the environment are his two top priorities, and he promised to continue the last government's efforts to reduce Sweden's dependence on fossil fuel. This coincidence between the President and the Prime Minster confirms that energy is a logical area for cooperation between Sweden and the U.S. I believe we have reached a tipping point. Maybe it's because of the Al Gore movie. Like him, I am an environmental optimist and I believe this problem can be solved.

I ask myself every day: what can we do? First, we look to ourselves. We have initiated a recycling program at the Embassy. I know, it is appalling that we have not had one before. My wife Judy is also letting me put our money where my mouth is. We just bought a biofuel vehicle. We intend to fill it exclusively with ethanol 85. Running the car on ethanol will reduce fossil fuel consumption by one ton every year, and using ethanol actually gives you more horsepower than you get with gas. Sounds like a win-win to me, with free parking in Stockholm to boot. And I bought a solar-powered recharger for my Blackberry.

Of course we have bigger ideas. One of my first acts in Sweden was to sign a Science and Technology Agreement between our two countries. That can provide the umbrella for government-to-government cooperation.

The Embassy wants to be a matchmaker. There are billions of dollars in U.S. capital looking for ways to invest in alternative energy development. One of the leaders in this field is James Woolsey, the former head of the CIA. He is involved with two funds that invest in clean energy technology. I've met him, and I want to put him and others like him in touch with Swedish corporations, entrepreneurs and researchers, anyone in Sweden who has a good idea that might merit some of this funding. There are also significant U.S. government grants and programs at the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense which we can put you in touch with.

We are going to use the Fulbright Program to send Swedish and American experts in this field across the Atlantic. We're going to create a position for an American professor to come to Sweden to teach courses on alternative energy, and we want to identify a Swedish student who has potential in this area and send him or her to the U.S. to study. The Department of Commerce office within the Embassy is taking the lead on our outreach to energy companies. The Department will be represented at the PowerGen show in Orlando in just a couple of weeks from now. Those of you in power generation or with a good idea to sell should consider attending that event.

I'm also pleased to announce that to help us in our work, the U.S. Department of Energy is assigning us an alternative energy officer, based in Paris but coming to Sweden at least once a month. He'll be helping us connect interested Swedish agencies and individuals to the right people in the Department of Energy.

This is a start, but we need more ideas. We need your help in identifying ways in which we can increase the cooperation between the U.S. and Sweden to achieve this breakthrough.

If you are personally working on something that you know someone is doing in America, and if a conversation with that person would help you both, let us know. We can use digital video technology to enable a video call between the Embassy and just about anywhere in the U.S.

If you are a policy maker and you are part of a team looking at tax incentives to encourage the use of alternative energy, come see us. We can help organize a trip to the U.S. to talk to your American counterparts, to hear what we do and so that you can tell them what works in Sweden.

If you are a business person and you want to make a statement, show that your company cares, come talk to me about how you can give financial support to the Fulbright program so that we can attract a top-notch American to come to Sweden, and so that we can afford to send more than just one Swedish student to the U.S. to study alternative energy. I would love to send two, or ten.