Let me begin by congratulating Dr. Rosner--and his entire team at Argonne--for winning five of R&D Magazine’s R&D 100 Awards this year.  In addition to Argonne, Energy Department scientists and engineers at our other Labs won another 36 awards, for a total of 41 out of the 100.

Argonne received one of its prizes for a reactor that produces and recovers bio-based products that can be used in place of petrochemicals.  The potential of biomass to reduce our reliance on petroleum, for energy as well as for other purposes, is a topic we are extremely interested in at the Department of Energy.  I can tell you it is a subject that also interests President Bush very keenly.  You may have heard that he came by and spoke recently at a conference in St. Louis on biofuels and renewable energy that our Department co-sponsored with the Agriculture Department.

So let me say a few words about the importance of innovations in science and engineering for meeting our energy challenges and then I’ll talk briefly about the role of technology in our economy more generally.

Last week--at about 8:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning, according to the Census Bureau’s calculations--the population of the United States hit 300 million. That is a milestone worth contemplating.  But even more noteworthy is the bureau’s forecast that we will reach a population of 400 million in the year 2043, just 37 years from now.

One thing all these new Americans will need is energy—and a good deal more of it than we are producing and consuming today. Our experts tell us that by 2030 total U.S. energy demand will be up by 34 percent.  To meet that demand—and reduce our current dependence on hydrocarbons—we must move forward aggressively to develop renewable energy sources.

To pursue that goal, President Bush announced the Advanced Energy Initiative in his State of the Union Address earlier this year.  The Initiative lays out a plan to accelerate our research into technologies that hold the greatest potential for ultra-clean and secure energy options.  These include commercially competitive cellulosic ethanol… advanced hybrid vehicle technologies, solar and wind energy and next-generation nuclear power plants.  We expect that these efforts will fundamentally transform the way we produce and use energy in this country, and reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources.

For instance, I am very excited about two new bioenergy research centers we are funding.  Our Department is putting up $250 million over five years--$25 million a year for each center--to pursue inter-disciplinary, high-risk/high-return research in basic science that, we hope, will crack the technological barriers to developing wide-scale and cost-effective biofuels.

Completed applications for this program are not due until February 1st of next year, but it is already generating strong interest around the country and we expect vigorous competition among applicants.

Here is something else we are excited about.  I am pleased to announce today that the Department of Energy has just selected 25 cost-shared projects for hydrogen fuel cell research and development.  Recipients include Argonne, the University of Illinois campuses at Chicago and Urbana, and the US Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratory in Champaign. Our Department will provide up to $100 million over four years for these projects, which we believe will help reduce the cost and improve the durability of fuel cells--two of the major obstacles to commercialization.

These projects--like all the efforts we are pursuing through the Advanced Energy Initiative--involve a heavy emphasis on technology.  That is no accident.  As I mentioned, President Bush believes that innovations in science and technology hold the promise of meeting our energy challenges.

And not just energy.  If we wish to remain competitive in the global economy, we must stay on the cutting edge of scientific progress and technological prowess.  As the economist and Nobel Laureate Robert Solow put it, “technology remains the dominant engine of growth.”  If anything, this is truer today than it was in the 1980’s, when Professor Solow first proved it empirically.

So in the same speech in which he announced the Advanced Energy Initiative, President Bush also unveiled the American Competitiveness Initiative, which recognizes the need to substantially invest in science and technology in order to ensure our future economic health and security.  At the core of the President’s initiative is a major increase in federal funding for basic research, and for math and science education programs--including an increase of half a billion dollars for our Department’s Office of Science.

Now, as Deborah explained earlier, the spirit of competition and scientific inquiry that has guided our economic growth is spreading around the world--which means that we cannot afford to rest on our laurels.

Many of you are aware that last year the National Research Council published a report called “Rising Above the Gathering Storm” that we’ve come to call the Augustine Report, after Norm Augustine, who chaired the committee.  And that report does quite a remarkable job of detailing the challenges that we face in science, mathematics, and engineering education in this country.  The facts laid out in Norm Augustine’s report are a matter of concern for all of us who care about the future of this nation.

And yet I am confident that if we put our minds to it, we can solve this problem, because Americans have always risen to whatever challenges have confronted us.  And we have always embraced the spirit of innovation.  In fact, our nation was founded on what were, at the time, some strikingly innovative concepts: the principle of human equality, and the idea that government exists to protect the unalienable rights of the governed.

It took us a while to put those principles into practice.  As my fellow engineers will attest, it can be a long time between the initial blueprint and the final product.  But we kept at it, and we’ve made amazing progress in fulfilling our highest ideals.

And along the way, we continued to innovate--and built the most prosperous and dynamic economy on the globe.  I am confident that we can maintain that position, but only if we keep up with the incredible pace of change that marks the modern world.

Nowhere has technology accelerated as rapidly as in the growth of computing power.  Perhaps some of you have heard the joke about computers and cars: If cars had experienced the kind of technological progress we have seen in computers over the last 25 years, they would all go 200 miles an hour; get 150 miles to the gallon; and would allow you to select a destination, and then steer and navigate themselves while you sat back and enjoyed the view.

On the other hand, they would also pull into parking lots without your instructions or consent; periodically shut down and have to be restarted for no apparent reason; and every few years would experience a catastrophic system failure destroying everything inside.

Of course, joking aside, the developments in computing power really have been remarkable--in no small part because of the work that’s been done through the Department of Energy.

On the one hand, the Department’s responsibility for the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile means we have had to develop the worlds’ fastest supercomputers in order to guarantee the safety, security and reliability of our nuclear weapons through mathematical modeling and simulations.  And by commissioning the leading manufacturers to build these world-class computers, we’ve made possible the commercialization of high performance computing systems that in all likelihood would never otherwise have been built.  Thus, the world-leading Blue Gene series of supercomputers came from a joint research and development venture between our Department and IBM.  It is now a product line.  Similarly, the Cray XT3, or Red Storm series, the main staple today of Cray, came out of our National Nuclear Security Administration’s partnership with Cray.  Today you can find it around the world.

The second contribution is much more direct, and more recent.  It involves giving industry direct access to the high speed computing facilities at our science labs.

I hardly need to explain to this audience how the complexity and intricacy of commercial products today has reached the point where computer simulation and modeling have become fundamental steps in the design process.   And of course, the more complex the product, the greater the need for access to high performance computers, or HPC’s.

I know that Deborah and the rest of the Competitiveness Council regard this as a top priority for America’s high-tech businesses.  That is why senior officials from our Department’s Office of Science and National Nuclear Security Administration--as well as the heads of computing from several of our national laboratories--participate on the Council’s high performance computing Advisory Committee.  This is a national “brain trust” of industrial HPC users, universities, computer hardware and software developers, and federal entities that use and fund the development of high performance computers.

Thanks in part to the work of this Advisory Committee, our Department is now allowing private industry--for the first time--access to DOE’s most advanced computers at Oak Ridge, Lawrence Berkeley, Argonne, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratories.

This access is arranged through a competitive program called Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment; we refer to it by its acronym, INCITE.  Until last year, the program was restricted to university and lab researchers.  But in 2005, we opened the doors to industry and encouraged applications for commercial projects.  Four private firms--Boeing Co., Dreamworks Animation, General Atomics Co., and Pratt Whitney--were among the fifteen successful applicants awarded time on these systems in 2006.  These projects include research on better designs for aircraft wings, more efficient gas-turbine engines, and improved computer modeling for fusion energy systems.

Because high performance computers today are as critical to commercial innovation as they are to purely scientific discovery, we are very pleased to have taken this step, and we hope to see even more private sector participation in the future.  I know we received many industry applications in the latest round of proposals, which were due Sept 15; those awards will be announced in December.  And I would encourage anyone who is interested in applying next year to go to our web site for more information.  You can find the details at http://hpc.science.doe.gov.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have built a great nation by unleashing the power of human creativity and ingenuity.  And I believe that if we continue to cultivate those virtues, continue to invest in science and technology, and continue to embrace the power of innovation, the United States will remain the most energetic, prosperous, and dynamic society in the world.

Thank you very much, and please enjoy the rest of the conference.

Location:
Chicago, IL

Media contact(s):
Craig Stevens, (202) 586-4940