(as prepared)

It’s a pleasure to be here today with two good friends, Deputy Prime Minister Maud Olofsson and Assistant Secretary of Energy Andy Karsner, as they sign an important agreement that will enable further cooperation between the U.S. and Sweden in the area of renewable energy. As I’ve said in some of my public speeches, two great automotive inventions came out of Sweden in the last century – the seat belt and the catalytic converter. My dream is that cooperation between the U.S. and Sweden will lead us to discover the seat belt of alternative energy, some innovation that becomes so essential, so ubiquitous, that we can’t remember a time before we had it.

People sometimes ask why I think this is possible, or why I think cooperation between the U.S. and Sweden is what will get us there. America, from the President on down, is eager to achieve that breakthrough, to find a way to reduce cut greenhouse gas emissions and reduce our dependence on oil. Sweden has experience in exactly this area. Sweden introduced a carbon tax in 1991, long before global warming was front page news. By combining American eagerness and Swedish experience, we can do great things.

The agreements signed here today were discussed by President Bush and Prime Minister Reinfeldt when they met at the White House in May. I was at that meeting and I know how committed both leaders are to the issue of global warming. I’m very excited to be here today to witness the signing because these two deals are going to advance alternative energy cooperation between our countries. This is my ‘One Big Thing,’ the focus of my tenure as Ambassador, and these agreements are important accomplishments. Progress that we make between the U.S. and Sweden can have major repercussions for the global environment.

You probably all know that between them, transportation and power generation account for about half of all greenhouse gas emissions. Today we’re tackling both of those areas. The Implementing Arrangement will help us develop cellulosic ethanol, biomass, and other alternatives to coal and oil that we currently burn in our power plants. The Volvo deal will replace some of the fossil fuels used in the trucking industry. I also want to point that this is a public-private partnership. The details are still being hammered out, but this project is going to involve money from the two governments as well as from Volvo. In America, this kind of thing is common, and I hope it will catch on in Sweden too.

I want to take a moment, if I can do it without embarrassing her, to applaud my friend and colleague Maud Olofsson. In signing this agreement between our countries and by witnessing this arrangement between Volvo and the Department of Energy, she is showing her personal commitment and the commitment of this government to the growth of green technology. There’s been a lot of talk about what I’ve done as Ambassador to interest American capital in the Swedish market. Minister, you have done much more, and the things that the Embassy has achieved would not have been possible without an equal commitment from the government of Sweden.

As I see it, there’s a horse-race on to see who can develop the most, build the most, invent the most green technology. We’ve got 76 biorefineries under construction in the U.S. Who’s going to supply the technology for those plants, the parts, the technical expertise? Swedish and American partners is my answer. Just one example of what we can accomplish: I had an email earlier this week from ParkerMessana Consulting Engineers. They’re an American firm, based in Seattle. They learned about Scandinavian Biogas, a company in Uppsala, because they were on the Embassy’s list of investable Swedish companies. Now ParkerMessana and Scandinavian Biogas are entering into a partnership because the Swedish company has a biomethane purification process that the American company needs for a big biodiesel project on the U.S. west coast. This is what we can achieve together, and this is what we are celebrating today.