***Energy for Sustainable Development***

**Remarks in Honor of Earth Day, 2006**

**Milton Charlton**

**Counselor for Environment, Science, Technology and Health Affairs**

**April 28, 2006**

**Honorable Dr. Kim Jae Bum, Secretary General of the United Nations
Environment Programme, Korea Committee; Professor Kim Il Chung;
guests:**

**I\'m delighted to again have an opportunity to speak to the Korea
Committee and to our other guests who are interested in environmental
issues.**

***[Earth Day 2006]{.underline}***

Last Saturday, the United States celebrated \"Earth Day\" for the 36th
time.

Before the first \"Earth Day,\" in 1970, unregulated industrial
development and neglect over the span of a century had led to skies
blackened from smokestack emissions, rivers fouled with industrial
wastes, and soil contaminated with toxic substances. In one famous
incident in the 1950\'s, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, polluted
by chemical factory wastes, caught fire.

As I recalled when we met last year, more than 20 million Americans
turned out for the first \"Earth Day\" to protest environmental
degradation. The startling success of that movement helped put
environmental concerns firmly onto the political agenda in Washington
and, eventually, elsewhere around the world.

In the United States we have much to celebrate regarding the progress
that has been made over the last 36 years.

Take air pollution as an example: between 1970 and 2002, our economy
grew 164 percent, our population increased by 39 percent, and our energy
consumption increased by 42 percent. Despite all this growth, aggregate
emissions of the six major air pollutants declined by 48 percent. In
other words, despite an economy that was more than two-and-a-half times
as big, our total annual emissions of the six major air pollutants fell
by almost half.

That is major progress, and the Bush Administration is continuing the
work. Since George W. Bush became President, air pollution has declined
by 10 percent. New rules will cut sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide
emissions from coal-fired power plants by more than 60 percent and limit
emissions from heavy equipment using diesel fuel. And the Bush
Administration is tackling, for the first time, the problem of mercury
emissions, with a proposed new law that will force a 70 percent
reduction in toxic mercury emissions by power plants over 15 years.

Of course, there is still more work to do. New information about the
damage done by emissions continually sets the bar higher. As a former
Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency said, \"The job is
never done. In fact, each increment of progress gets harder because
we\'re now reaching for the high-hanging fruit. We have to keep moving
forward, relentlessly pursuing improvement and finding better ways.\"

One major challenge that many participating organizations chose to
highlight for this year\'s Earth Day is climate change. My colleague
Michael Edwards recently talked with many of you about the Asia-Pacific
Partnership for Clean Development and Climate, which we think is an
exciting initiative with the potential to have a real impact on
greenhouse gas emissions. The Partnership has just concluded a meeting
in California, bringing together some 300 experts and business leaders,
to advance toward a concrete set of Action Plans. Not wanting to repeat
what Michael Edwards said, I decided not to focus squarely on the
climate change issue in my remarks today, but I am glad that Dr. Kim
plans to do so. And my own topic for today, \"energy for sustainable
development,\" is a closely related one.

***[Energy for Sustainable Development]{.underline}***

The spring season brings forth not only daffodils, cherry blossoms, and
the annual commemoration of Earth Day. It is also the season for the
annual meeting of the UN\'s Commission on Sustainable Development. This
year the Commission\'s meeting, its 14th, is scheduled for May 1-12.

The themes for the 14th meeting are \"energy for sustainable
development, industrial development, air pollution, and climate
change.\" This suggests just how much the issues of energy, economic
development, pollution and climate change are bound up with each other.
As the Secretary General noted in his report, \"Energy is essential to
poverty reduction and economic development, including industrial
development. At the same time, fossil fuel combustion for energy,
industry and transport is a major source of air pollution and greenhouse
gas emissions.\"

This is our basic conundrum. We need affordable energy, in
ever-increasing amounts, but most of the available and affordable energy
sources contribute to problems of air pollution and greenhouse gas
accumulation.

***[Why Do We Need More?]{.underline}***

Why do we need more energy? Because halfway through the first decade of
the 21st Century, there are still 2.4 billion people worldwide without
access to modern energy services. Fully one quarter of the world\'s
population, or some 1.6 billion people, live without electricity. Even
today, ninety percent of rural households rely on traditional energy
sources like wood, charcoal or cow dung for cooking and heating,
exposing them to high levels of indoor air pollution. For them to have a
chance to improve their lives and those of their children, they need
access to more, more affordable, and cleaner energy.

While rich countries must learn to use energy more efficiently, the poor
countries need more energy to meet even the most basic needs. The gap
between the haves and have-nots is startling: the average per capita
electricity use in the OECD countries is over 8000 kilowatt hours,
versus an average of just 83 kilowatt hours among the Least Developed
countries. Satellite photos taken at night illustrate the gap, nowhere
more starkly than on the Korean peninsula, where South Korea shines
brilliantly while North Korea remains almost entirely dark.

Energy is central to development, and central to our hopes of achieving
the Millennium Development goals. Energy powers the irrigation pumps
that raise agricultural output and the machines that turn out industrial
goods. It creates jobs and raises living standards.

It is therefore no surprise that emerging economies account for much of
the forecast growth in energy consumption. Energy use among developing
countries is projected to more than double by 2025, reflecting average
annual growth rates of 3.2 percent. In contrast, consumption of energy
in the mature economies is expected to grow by just 1.1 percent per
year, thanks to slower rates of economic growth and rising energy
efficiency.

***[Impact of Electrification on Rural Lives]{.underline}***

I had the opportunity while living in Brazil to witness firsthand the
impact of rural electrification on people\'s lives. While out on a
hiking expedition, I visited a very remote farm, where electricity had
arrived only three months before. The family\'s lives had changed in at
least two dramatic ways. The more obvious way was that they had lights
in the evening, and even had obtained a television, allowing them and
their children access to news of the larger world through the airwaves.
I\'ll never forget the look of pride on the face of the elderly
patriarch when he invited me in to watch television with them \--
something he could not have done a few short months before.

But even more significant was a change in how that farm family could do
business. The main product of the farm was the cheese made from their
small herd of cows. Thanks to the arrival of electricity \-- and the
purchase of a used refrigerator \-- the family could for the first time
store its cheeses at controlled temperatures, meaning that they could
choose when to travel the several hours to market, and meaning that they
could accumulate more cheeses and make fewer trips. Somewhat ironically,
by using relatively clean electricity, they were able to save on the
number of trips they had to make using relatively dirty diesel fuel.

One thing that had not changed yet in that farmhouse was the use of a
wood fire for cooking. Reliance on traditional cooking fuels can cause
substantial damage to health, especially of women and children, due to
indoor air pollution from poorly vented stoves. Indoor pollution is a
major contributor to respiratory infections, which are a major killer of
children under the age of five. The World Health Organization estimates
that 4,400 people worldwide die every day from indoor air pollution.

In addition to direct health consequences of burning traditional fuels,
in many places, cutting wood for fuel leads to deforestation and soil
erosion. You are familiar with the consequences of that here in Korea:
yellow sand is another thing that comes out in spring. Unfortunately it
is not as beautiful as the cherry blossoms.

***[Meeting Tomorrow\'s Energy Demand]{.underline}***

Where are we going to find the resources we need to provide modern
energy services to growing numbers of people? There is no single or easy
answer to that question. The need is so great that we are going to have
to use many different resources and technologies \-- conventional
resources, advanced and more energy-efficient technologies, nuclear
power plants, and renewable energy sources. Each country and region will
have to choose a combination that works best for its needs.

Many people who are concerned about the environment focus only on
renewable energy sources. The longest established of renewable sources
is hydropower. But investment in hydropower has stagnated in recent
years, in the face of environmental concerns and public opposition to
large-scale dam building. In many countries outside of Africa, the best
opportunities for hydropower have already been exploited. And while the
marginal cost of operating an existing hydropower facility may be almost
zero, the initial investment can be daunting for investors and even
governments.

The renewable sources that lately have captured the imagination are wind
power and solar power.

From 2000-2004 they both grew an average of 29 percent per year,
starting from a very low base. But even clean and endlessly renewable
wind power draws opposition from people concerned about aesthetics or
the safety of migratory birds. People want electricity, but they may not
want a wind farm next door.

New attention is also being given to renewable fuels derived from
biomass, such as ethanol and biodiesel. The use of these fuels has been
growing by 15-20 percent per year in the United States, and 11 percent
per year worldwide. Brazil is a leader in this area. Brazilian companies
turn sugarcane and sugarcane waste products into ethanol, which is a
relatively clean fuel. Flex-fuel cars that can use either ethanol or
gasoline account for roughly half of all vehicles sold in Brazil.

Despite rapid growth rates, renewables still provide a very small
proportion of our total energy requirement. A 2002 survey indicated that
only 2.2 percent of the global primary energy supply came from
hydropower. Just 0.5 percent came from wind, solar, tidal and geothermal
sources combined.

The big problem for renewable energy is one of cost. For power
generation, only large-scale hydropower is fully competitive with
conventional fossil fuels, which cost just \$0.02 to \$0.05 cents per
kilowatt-hour. With recent technological improvements, wind is becoming
more competitive, but solar remains substantially more expensive than
conventional power generation using fossil fuels. Nevertheless, the use
of renewables will continue to grow due to government incentives in many
countries, and increasing use will lead to gradually declining costs.

Nuclear power can be competitive with fossil fuels, and has the
advantage of not emitting greenhouse gases. A total of 442 nuclear power
plants are now in operation worldwide. But expansion of nuclear power
over the last several decades has been constrained by public concerns
over nuclear safety, waste disposal, terrorism and proliferation risks.
The commemoration this week of the Chernobyl disaster is a reminder of
the kinds of concerns that have fueled public resistance to expanding
nuclear power.

The inescapable fact is that fossil fuels, including oil, natural gas,
and coal, will remain the dominant energy source for decades to come.
Currently they provide more than 80 percent of the world\'s primary
energy supply. Most analysts expect fossil fuels to account for almost
90 percent of the additional energy resources that will be required by
2030. In China, for example, the consumption of oil is expected to more
than double over the next 25 years, to 15 million barrels per day. Even
with rising oil prices, fossil fuels are expected to remain among the
most affordable forms of energy for transportation and many other energy
services.

So we are back where we started, facing the conundrum. We need more
affordable energy for development, but the energy that is most available
and most affordable comes from fossil fuels, which contribute to air
pollution and the greenhouse gas accumulations propelling climate
change.

***[What is the U.S. Doing?]{.underline}***

Many concerned people seem to believe that because the United States has
not signed the Kyoto Protocol, it is out of the game on sustainable
development. Nothing could be further from the truth. The United States
Government and the private sector are working on many fronts to make
clean energy technologies more affordable, and to make affordable energy
resources cleaner. The U.S. Government has spent over \$11.7 billion
since 2001 alone, to develop cleaner, cheaper and more reliable energy
sources.

Thanks in good measure to U.S. investments in research and development
of renewable energy sources, the cost of wind-generated energy has
dropped over the last 20 years from 80 cents per kilowatt-hour to a
little over 5 cents. In the same period, the cost of a grid-connected
residential solar system has dropped from nearly 2 dollars per
kilowatt-hour to around 25 cents. We are striving to drop those prices
even further. We have announced the goal of 3 cents per kilowatt-hour
for wind energy by 2012, and 6 cents for solar by the year 2020.

The U.S. is also investing heavily in renewable energy production.
Renewables, including hydropower, now provide 9 percent of U.S.
electricity needs. Wind is the fastest growing renewable energy
resource. Installed capacity in the United States tripled between 1998
and 2003. The 2005 Energy Policy Act renews a \"production tax credit\"
for wind that has already contributed to the installation of 5400 MW of
wind capacity since 1995. Our goal is to have wind power provide 5
percent of our total electricity needs by 2020.

Together with international partners including Korea, the United States
is working hard to develop revolutionary technologies to change the way
we power our cars, homes, and businesses. One exciting example is the
International Partnership for the Hydrogen Economy. The goal is to
hasten the development of the infrastructure and fundamental
technologies necessary for the commercial use of hydrogen fuel cells to
power cars and homes. Hydrogen, when burned, produces only water vapor.
Using hydrogen to run cars would lead to a significant reduction of
emissions of both pollutants and greenhouse gases. Thanks to work
already underway, the first car driven by a child born today could be a
pollution-free hydrogen vehicle.

For the longer term, the U.S. and Korea are partnering in the ITER
project, which stands for International Thermonuclear Experimental
Reactor. The project will be built in France and is intended to explore
over the next several decades the feasibility of using a controlled
fusion reaction to generate electricity. If successful, it will mean
that we have a virtually limitless supply of clean fuel \-- in our
oceans.

The United States and its partners, including Korea, are also working
hard to address the issues that have held back the expansion of nuclear
power. The Generation IV Nuclear Forum, which again includes Korea, is
working to develop the next generation of nuclear power plants that will
be more proliferation-resistant, safer, and produce less waste. The
Global Nuclear Energy Partnership will work to develop an international
regime that ensures that countries can have reliable access to nuclear
fuels without acquiring the means to create nuclear weapons.

Another exciting initiative is the Methane to Markets Partnership.
Methane is a combustible gas that can be used to generate power, but
currently it usually escapes into the air without being used for energy.
It escapes from landfills, mining operations, flares of natural gas, and
even from the back end of cows, and is 23 times more potent as a
greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The Methane to Markets Partnership
works on ways to capture and use that methane. In the United States,
more than 230 landfill gas projects have been built since 1994. Already
by 2002, these projects had cut emissions of 17.3 million tons of carbon
equivalent, the same as taking 13.9 million cars off the road for a
year.

The list goes on and on. Under President Bush\'s new Advanced Energy
Initiative, the U.S. will increase spending on research and development
on numerous clean technologies, including improvements to hybrid cars so
they will be able to recharge from wall outlets, enabling many commuters
to avoid using gasoline at all on shorter trips. The initiative will
also promote the increased use of clean-burning ethanol.

Recognizing that fossil fuels will remain the most abundant and
affordable energy source for decades to come, the United States is
working to make them cleaner by developing technologies to capture and
store the carbon-based emissions, a process called carbon sequestration.
Korea is a member with the United States of the Carbon Sequestration
Leadership Forum. The United States also has a project under
development, called FutureGen, that will seek to demonstrate the
feasibility of carbon sequestration and other technologies by building
the world\'s first fossil-fuels-based power plant with zero emissions.

The cheapest energy of all is that you don\'t have to burn, thanks to
increased efficiency. The United States is working hard on technologies
to improve energy efficiency, using market methods. The Energy Star
program uses voluntary labeling to tell consumers about the energy
efficiency of products such as appliances. The program resulted in
savings of enough energy in 2005 to power 24 million homes, and avoided
emissions of greenhouse gases equivalent to having 20 million cars taken
off the road.

The United States is eager to join hands with others to speed the
development and adoption of cleaner energy technologies and
energy-saving technologies. That\'s why, together with Korea, China,
India, Japan and Australia, we created the Asia-Pacific Partnership on
Clean Development and Climate.

Ultimately, sustainable development is about improving the lives of
people. I want to tell you about a big success in the effort to improve
peoples\' lives through cleaner energy. In 2002, leaded fuel was used in
all but one country in sub-Saharan Africa. Levels of lead in the blood
of children foretold serious health problems including lessened
intellectual function. Following the World Summit on Sustainable
Development, the Partnership on Clean Fuels and Vehicles went to work to
change that reality. By the end of 2005, with help of the Partnership,
all 49 sub-Saharan African countries had stopped refining and importing
leaded gasoline. When the remaining supplies left over in storage tanks
are exhausted, sub-Saharan Africa will have eliminated the use of leaded
gasoline. A recent study in Jakarta showed that average levels of lead
in children\'s blood dropped by half after leaded gasoline was phased
out. If, as can be expected, the effects are similar in Africa, the
elimination of leaded gasoline will have a hugely positive impact on the
733 million people living there.

***[What You Can Do]{.underline}***

The message of Earth Day is that individuals, joining together, can make
a difference. The problems of energy use, air pollution, and climate
change are so big that we mustn\'t rely on the efforts of governments
alone. Everyone must pitch in and do their share to use energy more
efficiently.

So what can you do to help make energy use more efficient, and lessen
the impact on the earth, its atmosphere, and climate?

-   Use more efficient light bulbs. Replacing your 5 most frequently
    used lights with low-energy high output bulbs can save as much as
    \$60 per year in electricity bills.

-   If you live in an apartment building with a flat roof, talk to the
    management about installing a garden on the roof. Trees keep
    buildings cooler and lower air conditioning costs.

-   Demand to see and compare the efficiency ratings on products you buy
    such as appliances. .

-   Clean your vents to make your heating and cooling systems more
    efficient. Make sure windows and doors are sealed to keep out
    drafts.

-   Clean the condenser coil of your refrigerator. Dirty coils are
    inefficient. Avoid standing in front of an open refrigerator while
    thinking about what you want to eat.

-   If you buy a car, choose one that gets higher mileage.

-   Lower the temperature of your hot water heater.

-   Wash your clothes in warm water rather than hot water \-- they\'ll
    still get clean.

-   Turn off your computer when not using it.

-   Recycle!

Thank you for your attention.