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Stockholm
(as prepared)
Thank you for inviting me to be here today.
Before I became Ambassador I was a businessman. I have not had a career in the Foreign Service,
I don’t know much about diplomacy.
I do understand business and I like to think that I understand
people.
I went to school with President Bush. He is a good personal friend of mine; has
been since we were boys. We stayed
in touch, as we all do with our friends from high school and college. A little over a year ago he honored me by
asking me if I would represent him as Ambassador to Sweden.
In the U.S.
to be an Ambassador is of course a great honor. To be Ambassador to Sweden is considered a particular honor
because of the high regard in which Americans hold Sweden. I was flattered that the President asked
me to take this prestigious job and I quickly accepted.
Then I began asking the question, “What do I do as
Ambassador?” I decided that
what I wanted to do was to identify one subject, One Big Thing that I would
concentrate my efforts on in Sweden. The question was, “What would that One
Thing be?” Many of you have by
now heard the story. I talked to as
many people in Sweden as
I could; I talked to the President and others in Washington. Out of those consultations came the
recommendation – and President Bush’s suggestion -- that I concentrate
on cooperation between the U.S.
and Sweden
in alternative energy.
I must admit that when I first began to announce this in
Sweden
last summer I would sometimes get skeptical looks. People would say, “That’s a
good idea, but have you checked with Washington
on this?” I understood where
that was coming from -- the President did not sign the Kyoto Protocol, and
in the sometimes black-and-white world of climate change, the U.S. is “bad” because of this, and
the EU is “good” because it did sign Kyoto. Of course things are never black or white,
they are gray. I knew from talking
to the President that he does acknowledge global warming; he does recognize
that human behavior contributes to global warming. He is also concerned about the security
and reliability of energy supply. All
of these things combine in his mind to make alternative energy development
a very important priority.
So it was the President’s suggestion – and
the suggestion of many other people, of course -- that I pursue this issue here
in Sweden.
We launched the initiative in
September, and I have been working hard on it ever since.
Sweden
is a great partner for alternative energy cooperation, for several reasons.
Sweden has a well-developed
research and development infrastructure. Technology is a key factor in developing
the potential of alternative energy, and Sweden is, of course, an
innovative country. There is also an unusual inclination in Swedish society
to act responsibly and to accept green lifestyles and products even if they
cost a little bit more. Sweden
represents the ideas and technology needed to develop alternative energy,
and also the readiness in society to test, try and accept new ideas.
When we think about climate change and alternative
energy, there are different ways of looking at the issues. I would like to show you some fascinating
visuals -- maps of the world -- that come from an organization called Worldmapper, www.worldmapper.org. This website can distort countries based
on the information that’s being displayed. In this case, the geography of the
countries is distorted according to their use of coal. This shows us in a very strong visual way
where coal is used more and where it is used less. Look at how large the United States and China
are, for example, whereas Sweden
is almost invisible because very little energy, if any, comes from coal
here.
©www.worldmapper.org
Now look at nuclear.
Sweden looks
huge, as do France and
the United States.
Africa is almost non-existent. Latin America is small as well.
©www.worldmapper.org
Finally, hydro. Here
is where Sweden
looks the biggest. Around 50 percent
of all electric power generation in Sweden comes from hydro, and
maybe another 20 or 30 percent from nuclear. The U.S.
looks about normal; Canada
is about three times its normal size because of its reliance on hydropower.
Here, Brazil
expands and India
shrinks. Africa
is again almost non-existent.
©www.worldmapper.org
I show these images because it is useful to understand
what energy sources are being used in what countries when we think about
mitigating global warming and the importance of alternative energy. It’s also helpful to understand the
economics. Using U.S.
monetary terms, it costs about three cents per kilowatt hour to produce
electricity from coal. That’s
the baseline with which everything else needs to be compared. Until the cost of alternatives is in the
same ballpark of three cents per kilowatt hour, it’s unrealistic to
expect that alternative forms of energy will develop in a major way.
Currently gas costs five cents per kilowatt hour. Wind is six cents, or twice as much as
coal. Ordinary solar is 40 cents per kilowatt hour. Fifteen years ago solar power cost four
dollars per kilowatt hour. It has come way down, but solar is still much
more expensive than the alternatives.
Concentrated solar devices, possibly the next step in the evolution
of this technology, are much more promising. They will still be more expensive than
coal, by a factor of four, but much less expensive than traditional first-generation
solar.
What I am trying to do in Sweden is to find technology
breakthroughs that will reduce the cost per kilowatt hour of alternative
energy, so that alternatives are comparable in a market sense with the
baseline -- coal. I want to find researchers in Sweden who have ideas for making solar less
expensive to generate, or find a company in Sweden that is marketing a
product that makes wind or biofuels less
expensive and more efficient. If the
only thing that researcher or company needs to succeed is additional
capital, then I want to help make the connection to U.S. sources of capital.
This chart compares policy initiatives that encourage
the use of ethanol in France,
Sweden, the UK, and the U.S.
Look at the row labeled E85 infrastructure. Sweden has a mandatory
regulation that all service stations of a certain size must offer at least
a single pump of alternative energy fuel in order to be licensed. As a result you have 650 fuel stations in
Sweden
selling ethanol, which represents about 15 percent of the total number of
fuel stations. The U.S.
has 850 stations selling ethanol fuels, but that represents only one half
of one percent of the total number of stations. So the President has asked me: how does Sweden do
that? This makes policy one
dimension of the One Big Thing. In addition to research ideas and business
ideas, I want to see what ideas the U.S.
can learn from Sweden’s
policies that encourage the acceptance of alternative energy.
I would like to touch on some of the accomplishments of
our One Big Thing, and in the process of doing so give you some idea of
what we are trying to do. Some of
this may also give you ideas or suggest ways in which the U.S. Embassy
might relate to whatever it is you do.
First, we have produced a White Paper. In this White Paper we provide
information on the situation in Sweden and the U.S. for alternative energy,
we talk about the different policies in the two countries, and we have
reports on the current state of play for wind, hydrogen, solar, and biofuels.
The White Paper is, I think, a very useful resource, and
it represents a great deal of work. I don’t know if we’ve made
ourselves experts, but we’ve made ourselves a lot smarter as a result
of writing it. You can find it on
the U.S. Embassy website, www.usemb.se.
At the heart of the White Paper are 29 specific goals --
29 things that I want to accomplish as Ambassador in the area of enabling
cooperation between the U.S.
and Sweden.
They are divided into four
areas: technology; financing and
investment; public awareness; and policy.
We have already essentially fulfilled one of the major
goals in the area of research and development. Many of you have heard I’m sure of
the Fulbright program, which facilitates and funds educational exchanges
between Sweden and the U.S. Some
of you may even have been Fulbright scholars, or been taught by a Fulbright
scholar. I want to bring to Sweden
a distinguished, world-wide expert in alternative energy, to teach, to do research,
and to consult with business. And we
have arranged for that to happen. The
first holder of the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Alternative Energy
Technology will arrive in 2008 from the United States. He or she will be headquartered at Chalmers University. The money necessary to pay the
scholar’s salary, travel and his living expenses has been provided by
one of the Wallenberg foundations. This
is the perfect example of the cooperation I am trying to enable, bringing
the best minds on both sides of the Atlantic together, sharing ideas and
thoughts. And this is an early
accomplishment for the One Big Thing.
I am also working hard to enable connections in Washington. One person
who has inspired me in my efforts is Lars Josefsson
of Vattenfall. He’s a brilliant man,
soft-spoken but with a will of iron.
He is now advising Angela Merkel, and through Angela Merkel’s
close friendship with President Bush, Lars Josefsson
is meeting with President Bush and other members of the Bush administration. We’ve been assisting in those
meetings, so that, at the highest level, EU ideas and U.S. ideas on alternative
energy can be discussed.
Similarly, Maud Olofsson,
Minister for Enterprise and Energy, went to Washington in
January. We were able to set up a meeting
for her with her counterpart, the U.S. Secretary of Energy, Sam Bodman. Much of
the serious work in the U.S.
concerning alternative energy policy and technology takes place in the
Department of Energy. There’s
another accomplishment.
Another example. Volvo
approached us and asked for advice as to how to best present an idea they
had for research using hybrid technology in heavy trucks. We helped them present those ideas to the
right people at the Department of Energy and now we are working on a project
for three-way research between Volvo, the U.S. and the Swedish Energy
Agency. While that deal is not yet
done, it looks very promising.
On April 19 I will meet with a group of 20 or 25 venture
capital firms in Silicon Valley. At that meeting I will present a list of
about 30 Swedish companies that have great ideas in alternative energy but that
lack capital to expand. I’ll
suggest to the venture capital investors that these companies are worth
looking at and investing in.
We are also working on exchange programs. We want to bring Congressional leaders
from Washington
to meet members of the Riksdag to discuss policy
initiatives that will advance alternative energy. We also intend to send Swedish policy and
business people to Washington
to talk to their counterparts. We
have exchange programs set up in April and May of this year, in September,
and into 2008, going in both directions.
At another seminar here in Stockholm
last spring, I learned from a professor at Lund University
that the best ethanol-powered car on the market today is a Saab. So I went out and bought one. It’s what my wife and I drive around
Stockholm. It runs perfectly and we love it.
I told that story to Andy Karsner
at the Department of Energy in Washington
and he said, “You know, you should send us that car. We can test it, validate the performance
claims, and once we’ve done that we can actually recommend it to U.S. consumers
who are looking for an ethanol car to buy.” President Bush has called for a 20
percent reduction of gasoline consumption in the U.S. and a corresponding increase
in the production and use of ethanol. Americans are looking for ethanol
cars. Andy said, “Send us that
car,” so we did! Not my car, of
course, but we sent one like it, and it is currently at the Department of
Energy testing facility in Oak
Ridge, Tennessee. When the process is done, U.S.
consumers who want to buy a car that runs on ethanol may have another
option available to them.
Finally, once a month I travel around Sweden to see alternative
energy innovations. For example, I
went to Örnsköldsvik and saw the SEKAB demonstration
facility, where they are trying to master the process of making fuel for
cars out of trees. Imagine! Northern Sweden could be the next Persian Gulf if this technology is mastered. With me at
the meeting was Bob Dixon, who is a Department of Energy official I have
recruited to work with the Embassy team on the One Big Thing. Bob helps me evaluate the technology of
these facilities that we visit. When
he sees something that’s good, like what we saw in Örnsköldsvik, he helps me connect with researchers and
research grants at the Department of Energy in Washington.
That’s what the One Big Thing is about,
cooperation between our countries. I
think you can see that it produces potential for exports. The Saab 9-5 biofuel
car is one possibility, but I hope there are other examples of products
that I can uncover in Sweden
that through increased cooperation and exchange of ideas can find a market
in the U.S. We are open to ideas from business in all
areas, from second-generation bio-fuels to solar, wind and hydrogen power. The former CEO of Volvo cars told me recently
there are two Swedish inventions that are now included on every car made
anywhere in the world: the seatbelt and the catalytic converter. That's
what the One Big Thing is about: finding the seat belt in the world of
alternative energy. We are partners
in this effort.
Thank you.
Note: Maps in this presentation are used by permission from www.worldmapper.org © Copyright 2006 SASI Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan)
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