ZPEnergy.com - US-EU Energy CEO Forum

Ensuring a Sound Energy Future: Remarks With German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and European Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighborhood Policy Benita Ferrero-Waldner

SECRETARY RICE: ... Ensuring a sound energy future is one of the most critical challenges facing the world today. One of the most unexpected, indeed, disconcerting developments of recent years has been the warping effect that energy issues have had on the geopolitical landscape. Energy is truly a global challenge - making a decisive impact on issues as diverse as security, diplomacy, development, and climate change. No one nation can address the global energy crisis alone. We need to work together to seize new opportunities to develop cleaner and more efficient sources of energy and to prevent the global and rapidly growing demand for energy resources from generating unnecessary confrontation in the years ahead....

...I think we are approaching an inflection point in history when science, technology, policy and free markets are all converging on new approaches to supply affordable, reliable and clean sources of energy. To seize this opportunity fully, we need to change the shape of the table, ensuring a seat not just for policymakers, but for leading scientists and most especially for the private sector. That is exactly what we are doing today, Americans and Europeans together, to spur new and innovative approaches...

The United States and Europe are in a unique position to advance our common energy agenda both across the Atlantic and across the world. We share a common heritage which has generated many of the world's great entrepreneurs and many of its leading economies. We have the deepest and most innovative capital markets, seeding and growing many of the world's most innovative companies. We also have world-leading technical capacity to solve intractable challenges...

FOREIGN MINISTER STEINMEIER: (Via interpreter) Only last week when we met with our ASEAN counterparts in Nuremburg, we met with countries who based their hopes on the fact that in the end they will not only become objects of appeal but that they will be integrated and included in these joint efforts undertaken by the United States of America and the European Uni0n to do more for climate protection to further develop energy technologies. And that then at a later point in time those technologies will also be made available to regions like Asia. I think that that is something that when we intensify the cooperation between the United States of America and Europe that is something that we can indeed attend to. I think it's going to be decisive for cooperation. We are the European Union, you are the United States of America, in the areas of global technologies we are leading and right now if my perceptions are correct, both sides of the Atlantic are very active when it comes to the public but also to the private funds. A lot of these funds go into these areas. We are doing much more than we used to do in order to promote research and development of new technologies.

Source: http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2007/mar/81934.htm