Remarks at the MIT-Masdar Symposium

Chief Operating Officer Paul Dickerson's Remarks at the MIT-Masdar Symposium in Cambridge, Massachusetts

May 5, 2008

For years, I have traveled the world describing, in no small detail, America's vision for a clean energy future. And for years, we remained in the "vision" stage of development. Audiences had to put their imaginations to work because many of the technologies were still under development, and certainly had not yet been deployed.

Well, my friends, as we have heard this morning, this is a new day. In Masdar City, vision is becoming reality.

And, thanks to the foresight—thanks to the determination—of Dr. Sultan Al Jaberand his colleagues at the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, we will no longer have to guess what the city of the future will look like. In the UAE, we will be able to see it with our own eyes.

To see this type of leadership coming from a region of the world that, like my home state of Texas, has invested so heavily in traditional energy sources, is truly inspiring. And you can rest assured that everywhere I go I continue to point to the example being set by Masdar and the UAE to put a charge in America's step.

So, what I would like to do this morning is tell you how my office is responding to America's growing clean energy appetite; how we're reshaping the perception of a tired, old bureaucracy into a leaner, fresher, more efficient organization that connects markets; and how these changes make the U.S. an ideal partner for the UAE on the clean energy front. And once I close, I hope you will see how my office is behaving differently to address our nation's challenges, and serve as a better partner to our domestic and to our international friends.

From anyone's vantage point it is clear that energy is one of the most critical issues facing our planet. How we obtain it, how much we pay for it, and how we consume it are all questions we face on a daily basis.

The citizens of the world finally recognize that, whether you care about the environment, national security, or the economy we all want the same result—clean, green, secure, and affordable energy sources. And for that reason, there is wide international support to develop policies and mechanisms that reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and lessen our environmental impact.

It wasn't until just recently that America seemed to wake up to our new energy realities. Investments in sustainable energy topped $16 billion in 2006, and that number is growing at a rapid rate.

To help our federal government stay relevant in this rapidly changing space, my team came to the DOE to change our direction, quicken our pace, and certainly begin investing smarter Americans' tax dollars.

To accomplish this, we have focused our efforts on two major fronts: creating the necessary policy mechanisms to deploy emerging technologies into the marketplace; and identifying new markets for them both here and abroad.

Instead of guessing what the market was thinking, we turned to industry for advice, embarking on a concerted effort to make our office more transparent and to deepen our relationships with our entrepreneurs, investors, and business leaders.

We have learned much from these conversations. Solar and wind companies told us how hard it could be to procure federal lands for development, so we worked with the Bureau of Land Management to streamline the process. Biofuels companies told us how costly it could be to produce cellulosic ethanol on a mass scale, so we spent more than $1 billion last year building biorefineries to prove this technology. And investors told us they weren't aware of all the amazing technology under development at our 17 national laboratories, so we worked with them to get members of the venture capital community into the labs, working alongside our scientists to produce market-ready technologies.

In taking these and other steps we have changed our direction and quickened our pace. We are helping connect great ideas with smart money. And now we're in a position to bring America's greatest resource—its collective innovative spirit—to bear in the UAE, and in the rest of the world.

And as my office scans the globe, teaming with American companies and helping them find markets for their clean energy technologies, some obvious markets come to mind. Clearly, we can't look past China and its spectacular growth. We can't ignore India's impressive development.

But, friends, I must tell you—few markets appear to hold more promise than the clean energy Mecca rising in Abu Dhabi. Masdar City has the potential to inspire clean energy development in every corner of this planet. This is what brings us here today, and we all look forward to working closely with Dr. Sultan in making his dream a reality.

The U.S. and the UAE are on parallel tracks. At the beginning of our cleantech journey the Federation of Emirates, along with our nation, are addressing early stage development.

Our country pushes early stage development through our network of national labs and universities. The UAE will soon be pushing early stage technology development through its Institute of Science and Technology.

And, to segue for a moment, Masdar picked an exceptional partner in MIT. MIT represents America's best and brightest. My department has turned to them time and time again because MIT, under Susan Hockfield's leadership, is home to some of the best scientific minds our country has to offer.

It is clear that the U.S. and the UAE are in synch with early stage technology development.

Moving down the development pipeline, the U.S. and the Federation of Emirates are employing vast amounts of capital to promote middle stage development of technology. Earlier I described how my office is better connecting venture capital and private equity firms with technologies, pushing them through the middle stage of development. Similarly, the UAE and its Masdar Fund, managed by Ziad Tassabehji, are giving companies much needed financing to commercialize their technologies in the UAE. The fund concluded its first year of operations in 2007 with one of the most successful deal flows I have ever seen, deploying most of its $250 million in capital.

So we continue our push down the tracks of development from early to mid-stage, looking for those mass scale deployment opportunities. In the U.S. we're revamping our federal buildings, making them more efficient. We're overhauling our federal vehicle fleet, mandating the use of flex-fuel and hybrid cars and trucks. And we are deploying utility scale solar and wind, generating clean energy for our federal buildings.

In the UAE, your government is moving in the same direction—looking to lead by example consuming more clean energy. In fact, the portion of Masdar's project which is generating excitement throughout our nation, from Boston to San Francisco, is the Masdar City Initiative. Thank you, Khaled Awad, for your efforts.

There is so much excitement that tomorrow morning I'm hosting, here at MIT, an event with Masdar and this nation's biggest, most influential venture capital and private equity firms, identifying ways to deploy more U.S. technology to the city.

The U.S. and the UAE have come together with shared objectives—transforming our energy infrastructure, shifting our energy consumption, and serving as role models for the world. And, now is the time to bring our two tracks together, to build a bridge so that others may follow, helping us all arrive faster at a cleaner, more secure destination.

From invention to prototype, from venture financing to mass production, each of our countries is engaged at every stage of technology development. And while it is my job to help U.S. companies win in the global marketplace, we understand the greater stakes. We all recognize that promoting clean energy is not a charity project. People who do well in these industries are going to make a lot of money and they're going to do a lot of good.

Yet clean energy isn't merely a matter of economic competitiveness—it is also a matter of environmental stewardship. No one wins if we can't deploy clean technology across the globe to both developed and developing countries. And, as we know—as the UAE knows—no single nation has all of the answers. No single nation can solve our global energy problems. We must have international collaboration.

Together, the United States and the UAE enjoy great prosperity, provide economic opportunity, promote education, and share ambition. We are leaders on so many issues. And now, the world turns to us again. We are being asked, not only by our own people, but by all the people of the world, to take a leadership role in confronting the challenge of global warming.

Through Dr. Sultan's leadership, through Masdar City, through the Masdar Institute, through the Masdar fund, through Masdar's mass deployment of solar and wind technologies we will take a major step in meeting our global obligations, and we will make a profit while doing it.

Ten years from today, the world will look back on this as the time when our nations rose to the challenge and engaged in one of the greatest market transformations of all time. For our economies, for our climate, for our neighbors, and for our way of life, we must act, and we must act together.

Thank you.