This Science and Technology Facility is part of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory today because of the efforts of many people over the last seven years.

I particularly want to thank the members of the Colorado Congressional delegation, Senator Ken Salazar and Representative Bob Beauprez, who are with us here today, as well as Senator Wayne Allard and Representative Mark Udall, for their steadfast support for this project over the years.

They shared our vision for this building and then made sure we had the funding to make it a reality. Thank you all for persevering with us.

I also want to take a moment to thank the many people at the Energy Department, and NREL who helped bring us here today. I’ve been in the federal government long enough now to know how difficult it can be to get a facility like this funded and built. But when it all comes together—as it has here today—the results can be remarkable.

I do especially want to thank Admiral Richard Truly, who saw the need for this facility and got it well underway during his time as director here and Pete Sheldon of NREL and Matt Graham of the Energy Department’s Golden office for managing it all the way to completion. I also want to thank my Under Secretary, David Garman, for his leadership on this project over the last few years.  You have all done a great job.

And while I can’t recognize all the other members of the team that helped make this day possible, please know that the expertise, time and energy you contributed to this project are greatly appreciated.

It’s exciting to see a new building here on the NREL campus—this is the first one to go up since 1994—and especially one that fits in so well with the dramatic landscape here. And just as this structure blends in with its surroundings, the research work that will be done here will complement the direction we are taking in our national energy policy.

The President has told us that our national addiction to oil threatens our economic strength and our national security. He is absolutely right about that. To safeguard our future economic health as well as our national security, we must move aggressively to diversify our energy sources. Every time we visit the gas pump these days, we are reminded that there is no time to waste.

But, despite the headwind of high oil prices, the U.S. economy, I am pleased to say, continued its strong performance last month by creating 121,000 new jobs, and a total of 1.85 million over the last 12 months. The economy has also continued to expand strongly this year, with our gross domestic product growing by 5.6% in the first quarter.

That follows a 3.5% expansion in our GDP last year, the fastest rate of growth posted by any industrialized nation. These strong numbers show that this Administration’s pro-growth policies are working.

But for our economy to continue to grow the way we want it to and for our nation to maintain its global economic leadership, we cannot leave ourselves dependent on energy sources whose price and availability are beyond our control.

The simple fact is that we are overly dependent on fossil fuels and our current path is unsustainable. The only way to keep from growing more dependent and less secure over time is to make critical investments now to expand our future supply options.

I can assure you President Bush understands this equation. The Advanced Energy Initiative he outlined in the State of the Union message in January is a vigorous and targeted effort to speed the development of clean and renewable sources of energy.

The President has set a goal of cutting our imports of foreign oil by 5 million barrels a day by the year 2025 and this program will help us get there.

It calls for spending 22% more in the next fiscal year on developing solar and wind power, cellulosic ethanol, clean coal technologies and hydrogen fuel cells. I am pleased to say that so far Congress has been very supportive of the President’s program and I am optimistic that it will be fully funded.

For solar energy, we have proposed spending $148 million in the next fiscal year, an increase of nearly 80 percent over this year’s appropriation.

We are committed to delivering real world, real time, results that will benefit all Americans at the earliest possible moment. The Solar America Initiative we announced in February calls for making electric power generated by photovoltaic systems cost competitive with electricity from more conventional sources by 2015.

The work that all of you do here at NREL, and especially the research that some 75 scientists and engineers will do in this new $22 million Science and Technology Facility, is crucial to meeting that target and, indeed, many of the goals of the Advanced Energy Initiative.

The solar energy industry has been growing at an annual rate of more than 35% worldwide in recent years with no letup in sight. This is also an industry in which the U.S.—thanks in large measure to contributions from NREL over the years—has consistently been a global technology leader.

However, in recent years our domestic solar energy industry has fallen behind in its share of worldwide production of photovoltaic systems. We’ve seen competitors in Japan and Germany grow rapidly due to large and, I believe, unsustainable public subsidies.

We have chosen a different path. But with the help of this new facility and the Solar America Initiative, I believe American companies can stay in the running for worldwide leadership of this emerging industry.

From the outset, this building was conceived as a way to bridge the gap between the laboratory and industry. I applaud the thinking that went into it and the flexibility and adaptability of the design that emerged.

The 11,000 square feet of the Process Development and Integration Laboratory—I think you refer to it as the “ballroom”—will have six bays that can be configured for different research projects.

These will provide a setting where private industry users can bring in their own tools and retain their intellectual property while collaborating on projects with NREL scientists and engineers. This model will give us the best that both competition and cooperation can deliver.

By focusing your tools and talents on process integration you will be able to improve the performance and reliability of materials before they move into either pilot-scale or full-scale production. This will save time and deliver better results.

This new facility also expands your research capabilities in photovoltaics, thin-film coatings and devices, electrochromics, hydrogen, solid-state lighting and nanotechnologies. And it will allow research work to be done in a clean, particulate-free environment.

For photovoltaic systems, process integration is exactly the capability we need now.  Last week, the Department solicited proposals under the Solar America Initiative for $170 million in projects we plan to fund over the next three years aimed at driving down the cost of photovoltaic systems.

Our aim is to cut the cost of producing new photovoltaic systems by encouraging the development of new manufacturing techniques and component designs.

Because the teams that will compete for these projects must match the amount they receive from the Energy Department dollar for dollar, the total investment will be $340 million.

This will not be a conventional government grant program. The agreements we will strike with research teams will be flexible and market-driven. We will use the money we award to push the development of the most promising technologies.  Then we will select the most promising ones for more intensive work.

This is exactly the type of approach this new Science & Technology Facility is designed to handle and I am confident the brilliant materials scientists, physicists and engineers we have here will soon be uncovering new ways to make solar power more affordable for us all.

You may have noticed lately that the rapidly growing demand for solar energy systems is attracting interest from a new element—venture capitalists. That is a good thing.

 It is a sign of the progress the industry has made already and the money that the venture firms can supply will help the industry mature at an even faster rate. New technologies will make it to the marketplace and will be ready for integration into our power grid faster than would otherwise have been possible.

The push we are making on the federal level complements the strong efforts many states, including Colorado are making on their own.

By 2015, these combined efforts may be generating 5 to 10 gigawatts of solar-powered electricity. That’s enough to power between 1 and 2 million homes and to avoid 10 million tons a year of carbon dioxide emissions.

It’s true that we have all heard too many times that success in solar power is just around the corner but I have to tell you I believe we finally are on the verge of reaping the benefits of many long years of research.

And I expect that success will come from technologies that have their roots here at NREL. While crystalline silicon is still the material most widely used in making photovoltaic cells, the Thin Film Partnership that NREL has led since the late 1990s has opened up exciting new opportunities for other technologies as well.

Last year I visited United Solar’s new thin-film plant in Auburn Hills, Michigan that has an annual production capacity of 25 megawatts worth of solar power modules.

The technology it uses was developed through the partnership by NREL, United Solar and other companies. Its ability to lower the cost of making solar cells while also boosting the volume of production is quite impressive.

Since my visit, United Solar has started work on a second 25 megawatt plant in Auburn Hills and is now considering building a third 50 megawatt plant in Greenville, Michigan.

And First Solar of Phoenix, another member of the Thin Film Partnership, should produce about 45 megawatts worth of solar power modules this year at its plant in Perrysburg, Ohio—more than any other thin-film company in the world. Business, it seems, is pretty good.

The productive relationships that companies like United Solar and First Solar have had with NREL are precisely the type of government-industry collaboration I expect this new facility to encourage. I look forward to hearing about many more successful partnerships in the years ahead.

I want all of you here at NREL who do the work that makes these amazing things possible to know that you have our support and our attention in Washington. All we ask is that you use this new building to make more of that magic that comes from hard thinking and hard work.

So get to it.