December 6, 2004
New York University

The Third Annual William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation Forum
New Thinking on Energy Policy: Meeting the Challenges of Security, Development and Climate Change

Opening Remarks of President William J. Clinton

Thank you, good morning and welcome to the third annual Clinton Foundation forum at NYU. I'd like to thank my good friend John Sexton, his wife Lisa and all the people at NYU who have made us feel welcome here three years running. I'd also like to thank the other donors for this year’s forum to whom we owe a great deal of gratitude: Jim and Wendy Abrams, Nadine Schramm the president of Budd enterprises, Tommy Short and founder Tommy Short Charitable foundation and the chairman of the Earth Council Foundation and the Nicholas School of Environment and Earth Science at Duke University.

I want to thank the NGOs who have set up booths out in the foyer particularly to emphasize the importance of this issues we will discuss today to the developing world. I hope all of you will have a chance to stop by and get information on all the great work these organizations are doing. This meeting is well timed, not only because we have just come through a period of fifty-dollar oil but because of other important events taking place involving energy and the direction of energy policy in our country here. Tomorrow the American council on renewable energy is convening a meeting of 500 people in Washington called Renewable Energy (Phase two). In conjunction with the renewable energy and efficiency caucuses of the House and the Senate. On the December 8th, The National Commission on Energy policy, a bi-partisan group of energy experts from environment, labor, and consumer groups of which Jon Holdren one of today’s panelists is a co-chair is releasing an integrated energy strategy which is two years in the making to help Congress develop a national plan.

For us, in the United States, the focus on energy is highly important at this moment for security, economic and environmental reasons. And I must say I was personally disappointed in the recent Presidential campaign, which I thought did air a lot of issues in great detail unfairly to both sides, there was almost no serious discussion of energy and the environment and in the three debates we had even though there were security, economic and environment issues raised there was only one question asked of the candidates about environmental policy and no specific question about energy policy. Even though the decisions we make or fail to make in this area may have a bigger impact on America and the world than virtually all the things that were debated.

We are here to discuss two separate but related issues: One involves the dependence of America and other nations on imported oil in an age of terror and rapidly fluctuating prices. The other involves the dangers of global warming from excessive greenhouse gas emissions, especially in the developed world but increasingly in the developing world, mostly from oil and coal. The United States has about five percent of the world’s population; a little over twenty percent of the world’s GDP and emits about twenty five percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. About a third of those gases are emitted from transportation sources, a third from domestic and commercial buildings and a third from manufacturing and power generation. We also are now importing over half of our oil, about a fifty percent increase from fifteen years ago, seventy percent of that goes to transportation. The question that I would like to see us all focus on today is how can we respond to both issues, for the United States and for the world, including the developing world. That is how can we reduce our complete dependence on imported oil and how can we respond appropriately to global warming. For example, if Americans were to increase oil production in Anwar, for example, we could add to our supply about seven months worth of oil but it wouldn’t change our fundamental and destructive approach to green house gas emissions. If America were to rely more on the supply more on clean energy and conservation but we did it in an ineffective way it wouldn’t meet our energy needs and therefore would quickly fail.

I want us to talk about what the real options are: How important is natural gas as a bridging energy source, which emits fewer greenhouse gases. How real is clean coal technology? We’re today seeing in America not insubstantial amount of carbon dioxide from coal usage being stored in oil wells, the Norwegians are trying to store it in deep-sea beds. How much confidence do we have in clean coal technology? How much more needs to be done before we know that these carbon dioxide gases can actually be stored deep underground without being eventually released with adverse consequences. Can there be dramatically greater efficiency in electricity transmissions with the use of digital technologies and power grids. What is the potential for greater production of clean fuels: biomass, hydrogen, electricity, mixed fuel for transport, wind and solar. On a large and a small scale. What is potential for greater conservation? Why can’t we make lighter cars from composite materials that would be equally safe and use much less fuel? What else can be done in buildings and in manufacturing? What is the role of government in the Untied States and wealthy countries, any wealthy country, to develop cap and trade systems on carbon dioxide emissions. To invest appropriately in research and development, to provide tax incentives to create new markets to produce and purchase clean energy and energy conservation technologies. What are the special problems of the developing nations? The world’s poorer will be hurt most by climate change, yet they are largely governed by people who believe, based on the American model, that the only way to create wealth and stay wealthy and get wealthier is to pour more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. As a result within a couple of decades China and India will be emitting even more greenhouse gases than the United States, unless they and people in other developing countries can be shown a way to avoid the energy patterns of American development and European development in a way that generates wealth jobs and doesn’t undermine it.

There are clearly possibilities out there. Famously British Petroleum has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions ten percent below 1990 levels and added $650 million value to the company in the process. The Dominican Republic, whose president will join us shortly, is hosting the development of a 12 mega-watt wind energy facility with a potential for one ten times as large which can also serve Haiti. In the auto industry there already electric fuel vehicles and blended fuel vehicles available which get three times the mileage as SUVs. The History channel now on at lease two continents is dragging mobile solar generators, small-scale generators, on animal driven carts to remote villages to power a connection to its television network so learning can occur in places where schools are not available to young people.

Mr. Bob Congel, who's here from Syracuse, is trying to have the world’s biggest development, commercial development, powered entirely by clean energy over the next couple of years. My library, which we just dedicated, reduced energy consumption by thirty-four percent, with three hundred and eight solar panels made in California, with pl astic piping to carry hot and cold water to supplement traditional energy usage made in Kansas. A red state and a blue state. I say that to make the point that this should not be a partisan issue. For a country like the United States or Europe, struggling with growth issues. Or Japan who sustained a decade of no growth until the recent more encouraging signs; one of the big questions we have is how can we fulfill our responsibilities to create economic in poor countries and not to be protectionist and still generate more high-paying, twenty-first century jobs. My personal candidate is in clean energy is in clean energy and energy conservation technology. The jobs that we created in my library because we bought the solar panels and because we bought the underground heating and cooling with water through the piping and because of all the conservation technology we adopted-all made in America, are simply a tiny indication of what can be done.

Now what are the problems? Well, the old energy economy that emits greenhouse gases and relies on imported oil is very well organized, very well financed and very well connected politically. The new energy economy is diffuse, entrepreneurial, under financed and by in large woefully under connected politically. And the transition energy economy, that is using natural gas as a bridging fuel, is often expensive in production and distribution and the financing must come from someone other than the consumers, particularly where the developing world is concerned. On the other hand, there is a lot of reason to hope. We have NGOs doing wonderful work, as I mentioned. Al Gore, who I talked to yesterday, wanted to be here but couldn’t because of scheduling conflict just set up set up a development fund to try to finance projects and prove we can make a profit by building a clean energy future. I’m convinced the biggest problem is the mind set which still dominates the decisions makers in the public and private sector. Notwithstanding the powerful example of British Petroleum, notwithstanding a lot of other examples which all of you know as well as I do. The great French writer Victor Hugo once said there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. With energy I think the slogan should be there is nothing more destructive than an idea whose time has come and gone and nobody will face up to it.

My interest in this issue began almost thirty years ago. In January of 1977, when I was a young attorney general attempting to prove we could conserve our way out of the need to build a very expensive new nuclear power plant to serve three states in the middle-South area. I’m happy to say that the utility towards which I tilted, which is was then called Middle South now Energy has proved by its own example that a great deal can be done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in an economic way.

Almost that long ago I met one of our participants here, David Freeman, who was then head of the Tennessee valley authority then went to Los Angeles to run the local power company. Then at the tender age of somewhere north of seventy-five he decided he would start a new business in clean energy because he's always thinking about the future. In the White House we increased conservation standards for appliances, greened the White House complex; helped to draft the Kyoto accord which with all it's flaws was still an important step; proposed the BTU tax which helped to get my head handed to me by the Congress; and finally for a measly 4.3 cense increase in the gas tax probably lost the Congress in the '94 election. I also proposed for three years running a twenty-five percent tax credit for the production and purchase of clean energy technology and energy conservation products. And I used to joke to Newt Gingrich that I considered it to be one of the single achievements of my second term in office that I finally found a tax cut the Republicans would oppose. Because it created a new energy economy. Now Senator Lieberman will be appearing on this panel, he and Senator McCain chair a bi-partisan task force looking in to global warming.

Not long ago, Hillary went to northern Norway, inside the Arctic Circle, to the northern most village occupied in the world with a delegation of Republican senators to study the reality of global warming and climate change. I think this is becoming a bi-partisan issue in America. I will say again it is a huge economic opportunity, it is a serious national security issue and if this country hopes to be recognized as a positive force we simply have to do more to address the issue of climate change in a way that promotes not undermines growth of developing countries in the world.

So it seems to me that these are the major issues that ought to be addressed. I thank the panelists; there is an astonishing array of talent on these panels today and a lot of talent in this audience. So let's get on with the program and see what we can learn and do.

Thank you very much.

###