Remarks and Official Statements 2009
Renewable Energy Conference
Ambassador McEldowney’s Remarks
May 19, 2009
Sheraton Hotel
Thank you, Tony. I am delighted to be called, and thank you very much Minister Kalfin – both for your participation today, but also for the continuing support that you have provided on so many days in the past to the important issues between the United States and Bulgaria and our comprehensive partnership. I think it is befitting that the American Chamber of Commerce is helping us deal with this key issue, and I am delighted to see so many dear friends in the audience. I am also delighted to know that we have a number of visitors here from the United States who are coming to Bulgaria for the first time. That’s an important symbol, with, I think, lessons for us to learn.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I am genuinely delighted to be here to welcome all of you for what I know will be an extremely productive series of discussions and debate. I am especially pleased that the United States Government and the U.S. Embassy, through a number of agencies, could partner with the American Chamber of Commerce to help make today possible.
Now, we have a lot of experts in this audience. And during the course of this day, we’ll talk about new technologies and new products. We’ll talk about the technicalities of these things, and there will be lots of acronyms that the public may not understand, including BTU’s, and CFC’s, and CO2. Now, these are all critical pieces of this complex topic, and it is right and necessary that we talk about them. But I do want to ensure that we do not allow this necessary complexity to obscure what we are really dealing with here today. Because you know that as we come here together today to address the issues of renewable and efficient energy, what we are really talking about is something else. What we are really talking about here today are issues of fundamental importance, like national sovereignty and independence. We are talking about the well-being of our societies, we are talking about the future sustainability of our planet.
And think about those issues for a moment – what else is more important? What is more compelling before our governments, before our economies, before our societies, than these issues? Now, our success -- or failure -- in grappling with these issues, as governments and as societies, will obviously shape the future in very profound ways. This is why Barack Obama, why President Obama, has said that, “No single issue is as fundamental to our future as energy.” What we do today and in the days ahead, will shape this country, it will shape the United States, it will shape what we are able to do together. And that is why I think that it is such a terrific symbol that we have the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister who has come here to signal his support for this discussion, and the importance of the topic, and the importance of our two countries working together in partnership on this topic.
Now, many of you know that less than a month ago, another conference on energy issues was held in this same city. That was a conference of governments, and it was focused on the security of hydrocarbon supply across the European continent. That conference did important work by focusing on the need for greater transparency, reliability, and responsibility in the entire energy supply chain. The Sofia Energy Summit was extremely important because access to gas and oil will be a critical issue for some years to come.
But it is also clear that the time has come for us to look beyond the hydrocarbon age. In fact, it is past time. We are late, and we must work urgently now to develop the solutions that will carry us where we want and must be in the years ahead.
We need to be honest and face up to the problems and the challenges that we face, and we need to take every opportunity to remind our publics and our governments of these problems:
• Over-reliance on hydrocarbons has created untenable dependencies on a handful of nations. And there is no country that knows that better than Bulgaria.
• Over-use of hydrocarbons has severely damaged our environment, and scientists believe that damage will soon be irreversible. We don’t know what the impact of the damage we have done ultimately will prove to be.
• And, over-dependence on oil and gas – of which there is a finite world supply – has taxed our economies and stifled incentive to develop new energy alternatives, except for the people in this room and the expertise in this room, because you are the one who are going to help us turn that tide.
Especially the American company representatives and the American experts here know that for far too long, the United States has been a part of the problem. The United States is the largest per capita emitter of CO2. We have allowed ourselves to become dangerously dependent on foreign sources of energy. And when it comes to energy consumption, we have led by excess, not by example.
President Obama is determined to put those days to an end and to take principled action on energy and on the environment, and he has rejected the notion that you have to trade one for the other. He said, “We must do both, we will do both.” He has also said that the U.S. will partner with other governments at the negotiating table to chart further collaboration on these issues, and he has said that we will be a global leader in innovation and discovery, in hard work, and in the development of concrete solutions that pull nations together rather than push them apart.
It is irrefutably clear that the key to energy independence, to reduction of greenhouse gases, and to jump-starting our economy, the American economy, and the Bulgarian economy, in times of global financial turbulence, is further development and use of renewable and alternative energy technologies. To achieve that goal, President Obama has launched a 100 billion dollar energy plan designed to:
• reduce America’s dependence on foreign supplies
• create millions of new green jobs
• improve the environment through reductions of greenhouse gases
• increase energy efficiency, and
• invest in renewable and alternative energy technologies.
Those of you who live in the U.S. know what this means. The President’s vision represents a profound transformation of the American economy, of the American outlook, and the American lifestyle. For the plan to become a reality, all Americans will have to undertake serious changes and they will have to make sacrifices. It will not be easy, but we have made our choice, and we are determined to move forward.
We, here in Sofia at the American Embassy, have started to implement the President’s vision through the steps that are possible for us. And I want to share some of these with you because I know that at times, especially when the public looks at these issues, they say it is too hard or it is impractical. But, in fact, it can be done. Inside our Embassy we have:
• Created a “Green League” within the Embassy to promote environmental and conservation awareness among our staff.
• Initiated recycling program.
• We use efficiency technologies such as occupancy sensors to reduce energy consumption.
• A solar water heater on our building reduces our energy consumption by two-thirds.
• All of our heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems are free of CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons).
• We encourage carpooling, and we have started and we will continue to have our motorpool consist of Hybrid vehicles.
• And we’re working to build awareness about these issues, about what communities can do throughout the country of Bulgaria.
What we’ve found in the course of these steps is that little changes, when added together, result in impressive changes, impressive savings. We’ve also found that the more we do, the more motivated we are to seek out new ways to improve our environment, our efficiency, and our savings. And our experiences, what we have done, are emulated on a scale throughout the country where people have the courage and the motivation to get started, and to work on these projects.
The Bulgarian Government, as the Deputy Prime Minister has explained, has its own energy goal, which is to turn this country into an energy hub. This is an ambitious goal focused primarily on the transport of hydrocarbons. We support this goal, but want to be even more ambitious. And if you will indulge me, Minister Kalfin, because we believe that in addition to being a hub for the transit of oil and gas, Bulgaria can also be a hub for renewable energy.
This country may not be blessed with its own oil and gas, but it is rich in the renewable resources of wind, and water, and geothermal energy. By harnessing those resources, along with the most precious thing that this country has, which is human ingenuity, this country can become a new kind of energy hub: it can become – my favorite word - an incubator, or a showcase, for cutting-edge technologies that prove the cynics and the doubters wrong, and that say – yes, indeed, Bulgaria is the place where exciting new things on energy can happen and do happen. To make that occur, there will need to be several ingredients. There will need to be political will, there will be a need for popular insistence, and there will be a need for help from the people in this room. If those things exist, we can stop saying it can’t happen, and can start saying that it will happen and has happened.
Now as we look at renewables, we have to also look into the issue of efficiency and conservation. As Europe’s least energy efficient country, Bulgaria has the most to gain from conservation. I find this is most revealing if you take a look at a few practical facts.
Consider for a moment, if every home in Bulgaria replaced one incandescent light bulb and in its place put in a compact fluorescent light bulb, the experts say that in one year this single step would save enough energy to light more than 70,000 homes and prevent greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those of more than 18,000 cars. I find that an astonishing statistic. One light bulb!
And think for a second about efficiency, about ways to prevent the loss of energy. If adequate installation and weatherized doors and windows were placed into a home, more than 50 percent of the energy use could be conserved, and we could save over 1,100 lbs of C02 per household per year. Those are very, very dramatic statistics, and they tell us how much we can achieve with very little steps.
Now, as you have heard, it’s more about savings and it’s more than just proving the technology works. Bulgaria has several motivations for moving forward, and one of them is meeting EU climate targets. These are ambitious targets, and to reach the EU goals of producing 16 percent of all energy through renewables by 2020, and to increase energy efficiency by nine percent by the year 2016, there is a lot of work here. There’s a lot that has to be done, and it’s going to take some intensive effort. But the U.S. companies who are represented here today are ready to help, ready to help make this happen. The U.S. companies here offer energy saving solutions to solve Bulgaria’s toughest challenges and, in fact, they are already starting. Bulgaria is now the host, will soon be opening the largest wind park in the Balkans. That happened because of an American company, the representative of whom is sitting right here. There are other things that American companies can also do to help partner in this effort from improving efficiency of municipal lighting to cutting CO2 emissions and through developing better traffic management plans. The time to start all of these efforts is right now, and the place to do it is right here.
The companies here today are the people with the vision and the know-how to make it happen.
Ladies and Gentlemen, what I would like to ask you to do, now and through the course of the day, is to take our discussions, learn the lessons that we need to learn, and together resolve that we will make this day the beginning of the new energy era in Bulgaria. Let’s make this day the moment when ideas and imagination merged with technical capabilities, with political will, and with social imperative so that when people look back months or years from now and talk about an AmCham conference that took place, they can say this was the day that really sparked the effort, the day when Bulgaria and America began to build together those energy pathways into the right kind of future, the future that all of us want for our countries.
Thank you very much, and I look forward to a really fascinating day!
Thank you.