Thank you, Leon, for that kind introduction.

I’m very pleased to be with all of you today to talk about a topic that is on all of our minds—at least all of us in this room. And that’s not the election or the World Series—as a Red Sox fan I’m afraid my attention has already moved on.

It is biofuels—and how we can tap what plants and microbes already know about drawing energy from the sun, soil and air to solve our own energy challenges. The more we can rely on renewable fuels like ethanol and biodiesel to meet our energy needs—the  less we will have to depend on oil imported from unstable and sometimes hostile parts of the world—and the less carbon we will be adding to the environment.

Last week we officially became a nation of 300 million people. That is a historic milestone. But what really concentrates the mind is the Census Bureau’s forecast that we will reach a population of 400 million in the year 2043—just 37 years from now.

One thing all these new Americans will need is energy—a good deal more of it than we are producing and consuming today. Our experts tell us that by 2030 total U.S. energy demand will grow by 34 percent.

To meet that demand in a politically, economically and environmentally responsible way, we must continue to diversify and expand our energy sources.

Biofuels will not only give us more control over our own energy supplies, they will allow us to tap our nation’s scientific and agricultural resources to create and supply new domestic markets for renewable fuels.

Along with feeding the world, American farmers will be able to help power our transportation sector by growing the raw materials for biofuels. 
I believe most Americans very much want to see more renewable and domestically produced fuels added to the energy choices they have.
They are showing that by buying more ethanol at the pump, driving more hybrid vehicles off the showroom floor and installing more solar panels and energy saving systems in their homes.

They believe—as I do—that while we will continue to experience fluctuations in the world price of oil, we must not be distracted by them. We must remain committed to taking control of our energy future.

I know that your group—which brings together so many business interests—has not found it easy to reconcile everyone’s views on biofuels. But organizing this conference was a very positive step and I commend you for it. I hope what you have heard here today has left you as excited as I am about the prospects for biofuels and will make it easier for you to come to a consensus.

Simply put, the Chamber is the voice of business here in Washington and your leadership will be essential if we are to succeed in making biofuels commercially available—and if we are to take the next step down the road to a more energy secure America.

At the Department of Energy—with the strong backing of the President—we are focused on removing the barriers to making renewable fuels a cost effective and practical alternative in the marketplace.

One of our key research goals is finding better, cheaper ways to make ethanol from plant fiber—so-called cellulosic ethanol.

The raw material can be cultivated crops like switchgrass…or reclaimed waste products like wood chips or corn stalks. But the key is finding the right enzymes that will efficiently break down the feedstocks into sugars that can then be converted to ethanol.

Solving this problem will allow us to expand the supply of plant materials we can use for ethanol—and lower its cost.

We also need to build up and adapt the infrastructure for delivering renewable fuels to consumers and meet the distribution challenge.  This work will ultimately be done by the private sector, but government can—and should, in my opinion—serve as a catalyst for these developments.

In that regard, I am pleased to say that today our Department is announcing 16 grants we are making under our FreedomCAR and Vehicle Technologies Clean Cities Programs with a project value of $25.4 million.

The largest share of these grants will go to support projects to install new pumps for dispensing E85—the blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline—along major highway corridors around the country.

In just the last six months, more than 300 new E85 stations have opened around the country and today we have more than 900. We need more and these grants will expand the network further.

The grants will also fund new facilities for blending biodiesel fuels. In all, they will help create new alternative fuel facilities at 180 locations in 25 states and here in the District of Columbia.

Our Department has set two important goals for biofuels, the first is to make cellulosic ethanol—a practical and cost-effective alternative to gasoline by the year 2012. The second is to displace 30% of our current consumption of gasoline with biofuels by the year 2030.

To reach this 30 by 30 goal, America must raise its production of biofuels from the current level of five billion gallons a year to 60 billion gallons a year—quite a substantial jump.

And we will need to have the help of some dramatic—or as our scientific people like to say “disruptive”—breakthroughs in technology.
Fortunately, because America’s biotech industry is the most advanced and most competitive in the world, we are in an excellent position to achieve those breakthroughs and propel ourselves into a brighter energy future.

Since scientists first discovered how to manipulate the genes inside a DNA molecule in the early 1970s, the development of biotechnology has been moving ahead with astonishing speed.

People are often surprised to hear that the Department of Energy played a critical role in that progress. But in 1986, our scientists launched the Human Genome Initiative, which evolved a few years later into the Human Genome Project—to identify and sequence all the genes in human DNA.

In 1990 the project became a formal partnership between the Energy Department and the National Institutes of Health that was completed 13 years later at a cost of $2.7 billion—under budget and two years ahead of schedule.

Scientists in university research labs and private companies have made good use of that road map to the human genome. They have also taken advantage of the financial support that have been made available by NIH—which —with backing from the President and Congress—saw its overall budget double from 1998 to 2003.

Today, patients can benefit from more than 225 new, biologically based drugs and vaccines that have been approved by the FDA for use in the U.S. as well as from an expanding set of agricultural and industrial applications for our knowledge base in biotechnology.

Last year, the world’s publicly-held biotech companies reported revenues of more than $63 billion—$47 billion of that came from U.S. companies.  And because the U.S. is the global leader in the field, European and Asian companies come here—and invest here—so they can participate in both the best science and the best commercial opportunities available.

Now, we want to build on the biotech revolution, and direct this enormous volume of learning and experience toward energy applications.  Our principal method for doing this will be through two new bioenergy research centers we are funding.

The Energy Department is putting up $250 million over five years—$25 million  a year for each center—to pursue inter-disciplinary, high-risk/high-return research in basic science that—we hope—will crack the technological barriers to developing wide-scale and cost-effective biofuels.

Nature knows how to break down cellulose, the fibrous part of plants.  The tiny microbes in the gut of the termite, for example, have been doing this very effectively for millions of years.  Cellulose will break down into sugars.  Once you have sugars, of course, Nature also knows very well how to turn sugars into ethanol (in fact it’s the ethanol produced by microbes that gives a glass of champagne its kick).

Our goal is to tap the secrets of these natural processes and harness them.  The really tough challenge is converting cellulose to sugars cost-effectively. The trick is to find the right microbe to interact with the right biomass source.  We will likely need to match the bug to the plant by genetically re-engineering both.

We’re interested in cellulosic ethanol because it seems to have the greatest near-term promise. But we’re also interested in other forms of biofuel—biodiesel, biofuels for aviation, hydrogen, and other fuels-from-sunlight.

The multidisciplinary teams in these bioenergy research centers will be applying the latest advances in biotechnology, studying both microbial processes and the plants themselves, down to the molecular level.

The goal is to achieve transformational breakthroughs in basic science that will help us chart a path to biologically based production of fuels—in large quantities and at a low cost.

In the wake of the biotech revolution, many of our scientists have come to believe that this very challenging goal is no longer a pipedream but a reasonable goal—and an urgent one.

There is plenty of reason to be optimistic. Researchers at the centers will be able to use the powerful arsenal of cutting edge scientific tools that we’ve developed at our DOE national laboratories. Tools like rapid DNA sequencing, advanced light sources, and supercomputers.  These advanced, world-class instruments and capabilities are already taking science to a new level, producing new discoveries month in and month out.
We are encouraging universities, national laboratories, nonprofit agencies, private investors, and industry to apply on their own or join together as consortia to compete for the funding for these new centers.

Completed applications for this program are not due until February 1st of next year, but it is already generating strong interest around the country and we are looking forward to vigorous competition among the applicants.

Earlier this month, the President joined Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, myself and 1,600 attendees in St. Louis for a very successful conference on Advancing Renewable Energy.

The level of interest from people in both the private sector and the academic world in moving this field forward as quickly as possible was very impressive.

I think creating these two new bioenergy research centers will help us do that and has the potential to be the best thing we do during my tenure as Energy Secretary.

Biofuels alone, of course, won’t solve our nation’s energy challenges, that is going to take an array of strategies and technologies.

The President’s Advanced Energy Initiative calls for spending 22% more on research in this fiscal year to speed the development of clean coal technologies, better batteries for hybrid vehicles and wind and solar power—as well as biofuels—to wean us away from our overdependence on oil.

We are also putting forward incentives to spur the construction of a new generation of nuclear power plants in the U.S. that will give us additional capacity to generate clean energy.

And we are advancing new nuclear fuel recycling technologies through the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or GNEP, that will encourage broader use of nuclear power around the world while reducing proliferation risks.

At the same time, we know that oil and natural gas will continue to be an important part of our energy portfolio.

To ensure that we have access to adequate domestic supplies we will continue to press for further environmentally sensitive exploration on the Outer Continental Shelf and in the Artic National Wildlife Reserve.

In the field of bioenergy, though, something special is going on. We are seeing a new kind of convergence that is making energy from biomass more promising than at any time before. New technologies and expanding scientific knowledge are bridging gaps we once thought would never be closed.

We now have BP and DuPont working with British Sugar to make bio-butanol from sugar beets and Chevron Technology Ventures signing up as a member of BIO, the biotechnology industry’s biggest trade association.

I believe we will be seeing more new alliances like these in the days ahead.

And I invite all of you to join us as we press for the advances in bioenergy that we must have to build a more secure energy future for our nation.
I believe that we will see more new alliances like that formed in the days ahead and I invite all of you to join us as we press for the advances in bioenergy that we must have to build a more secure energy future for our nation.

Thank you for having me and now I’ll be happy to take some questions.

Location:
Washington, D.C.

Media contact(s):
Craig Stevens, (202) 586-4940