Major Economies Meeting Press Conference

HOST: Welcome to the embassy, where we’ve got a very interesting briefing ahead of us. I am proud to introduce the Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs at the U.S. Department of Energy, this is the first time we’ve had a briefing group in that capacity, and also the State Department Assistant Secretary for Economic, Energy and Business Affairs, Daniel Sullivan.

They will start out making statements and then they’ll take your questions and I ask you, when you do ask your questions, please indicate which media you’re from. You have about 30 minutes. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HARBERT: Well, good afternoon, we’re delighted to be here. I thought I would try and put this initiative of the United States into some perspective why we feel it is an urgent and compelling initiative and talk a little bit about the achievements of the meeting. And, a little bit about what we see as the path forward and this leading too.

You’ll notice that this initiative is called the energy security and climate change initiative and that is for a very distinct reason. If you look at energy demand around the world over the next 25 years, energy demand is going to go up by over 50 percent, the demand for electricity is going to go up by 100 percent, and we’re seeing a tremendous explosion in transportation urbanization; urbanization means more dense energy consumption. And China right now has 9 million passenger cars on the road and over the next 25 years could have as many as 3 hundred million cars on the road. What kind of cars are they going to be, where their going to be made and what type of fuel are they going to run on.

Yet at the same time, we have 1.6 billion people that do not have access to electricity. And we want to bridge that energy poverty gap. Eighty percent of green house gas emissions are energy related. So, if you look at those facts about the growth and energy demands, we have to solve energy security and climate change together, there inexplicably entwine.

We want to see the global economy continue to expand, people to have the opportunity to work, but they need fuel to do that and they need energy to do that. So, we have to find a better way to produce and consume energy in order to not only meet energy demand of the world, but equally as important, to be better environmental stewards and to solve the climate change over the long term, and it is a long term problem, there is no quick fix to the climate change problem, or the growth in energy demand change.

This initiative is a little bit different than a lot of the other initiatives that are put forward on climate change. For a couple of reasons, first of all, its solution focused, this is not about redefining the problem, but about coming to consensus on the solution. And principally that solution is going to involve better access to clean energy technology and huge new investments in technology and clean energy.

The other differentiator was the delegations of these 17 major emitters and major economies that attended this meeting were not just of environmental ministries, it was energy ministries, environmental ministries, foreign ministries, commerce ministries, agriculture ministries, to get a much broader set of actors at the table to come to a solution that would cut across all the different countries economist.

And at the end, you will notice there was no communiqué. So many international meetings spent a lot of the time negotiating words on a page that are distributed to the media, we did not do that. There is a chairman statement that summarizes very accurately what the discussions were.

This is not an end product; this is the beginning of the initiative to get to the solution. And so that we decided not to focus on a communiqué and instead focus on what actions people were going to be willing to take over the next year or so to come to a solution and come to a consensus on a global national goal. Backed up by nationally defined strategies, and backed up by equally important large new investments and clean energy technology.

As I said, there was consensus amongst the group that two key drivers would help us solve the climate change challenge, technology and investment. We’re principally focused on the technology side and what we’re going to need to do, to meet that big demand. Electricity growth with low carbon fossil power, how were going to capture carbon and sequester it? What are we going to do about this big growth in vehicles and the fuel technology needed to power those vehicles’? How are we going to better address land use? With the growth in biofuels and deforestation looming is very big challenges, how are we going to better collectively to address that?

And lastly, we have a lot of existing technologies that are commercially available now: wind, solar, nuclear, energy efficiency. How could we better help those technologies to penetrate the market? We talked a lot about reducing tariff on clean energy goods and services as a way to expand their use. I think all the countries agreed that one of the most important approaches to solving climate change was to have a balance approach, one that it would assure energy security, assure economic growth, and accelerate the solution to climate change.

From the United States prospective we have invested over the last seven years $12 billion in climate change science, in order to better understand the nature of the challenge. When President Bush first took office, I first want to make sure we understood the problem before we define the solution. We believe we have learn a lot in the last seven years, we’ve at the same time invested about $18 billion in technologies, so that we would actually have the technologies solutions available to be able to deploy them to address climate change.

At the same time, we’ve looked at how harness the power of the market and we now have legislation that has authorized up to $12 billion of new tax credits and financial incentives to get these technologies into the market. So we understand the problem, we’ve invested in the solution; we’re capturing the power of the market to get the solutions much more into the U.S. and global market.

Let me say one word about one of the President’s most recent initiatives and then lastly, a word about UNFCCC, and the relationship of this initiative to the UN framework convention.

The President announced last year, he stated earlier this year in his State of the Union initiative called 20 and 10, which is a proposal to reduce our gasoline consumption in the United States by 20 percent and replace 15 percent of that with alternative renewal fuels. The reasons we propose that is because we have invested heavily in those technologies that will be able to allow these new fuels to come to market. It is a mandate, it is not a voluntary program, it is something that we hope our Congress will pass so we can actually reduce our consumption and reduce alternative and renewal fuels.

Over the past 7 years because we’ve invested in these technologies, I think something that people don’t appreciate is that we’ve actually in the United States reduced our national green house emission intensity by 8.5 percent between 2000 and 2005. And that’s at the same time our population grew by 5.3 percent and our economy expanded by 12 percent, so those are for the same 5 year period, which is proof positive that you could still expand your economy and combat climate change and that’s really what this initiative is all about is trying to do that while still continue to fuel the economy.

This is in parallel, not in conflict with, or a competitor to UNFCCC; the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. We believe that this would actually contribute to the countries that are signatories to the protocol to actually achieve an agreement at the end of 2009 on a global goal and a pathway to get there. So we see this as an accelerator, not in place of, not a replacement for, but something that would contribute to the success and agreement to the new post 2012 framework for a climate change.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SULLIVAN: Karen, great, thank you, and thank everybody for coming. It is great to be back in Paris. I wanted to just briefly add to what my colleague already so eloquently stated. I have just a few additional points.

I think the first thing is from the United States prospective we saw that the major economies meeting was a significant success. So, and there are a number of reasons for that, but I think just by the fact of who was in that room and when you look up and saw the 16 major economies there, plus the United Nations, plus the outgoing and incoming head of the IEA.

We saw this as a very important component of what Karen mentioned with regard to developing a detailed contribution to a post-2012 framework -- part of the UNFCCC process -- and also for the process of setting up long term greenhouse gas reduction goals.

As the President mention at the G8 when this idea was first broached, from the U.S. perspective there has been a lot of countries that have looked for American leadership in this area and he has mentioned that he views the role of the United States as an important bridge between key developed countries, in Europe and other places, and developing countries. Yet again you saw that in this meeting where it was 16 of the largest countries contributing over 80 percent of green house gas emissions sitting down as Karen said, “…not negotiating and communicating,” but actually comparing plans, comparing measurements and starting to look towards the different components of the work plan that came out of this first meeting.

Again she mentioned there will be many more of these meetings beyond this. But I wanted to put this into a little bit of a broader context this notion of why we see this success. This is something that has come about a little bit slowly, so there have not been a lot of news stories about this -- and generally the news stories has been negative -- but there has been significant convergences of views on many of the issues between the countries in the room with regard to climate change over the last year.

One of the responsibilities I had over the past year was that of the U.S. Sous Sherpa for the G8 negotiations, which focused a lot on climate, as you know, at the Heiligendamm G8 Summit in June. At the beginning of that process, I would say there were very significantly different views on many of these climate issues, and it was primarily not just the European views and the United States, but pretty much, the non-EU G8 countries with certain views and European G8 countries. But what you have seen over the last several months is how on a lot of these areas there has been convergence, whether it’s with regard to looking at the climate challenge from an integrated approach, dealing with climate, environment, energy security, economic growth, and technology issues that is clearly reflected in the discussions at this last conferences, clearly reflected in the G8 leader statement, and it’s something we think is the most rational way to approach this.

Also, as Karen mentioned, the issue of climate. By addressing climate, do you have to necessarily decrease your economic growth? Indeed, we think it should be the opposite way to have robust economic growth, and that’s actually a critical component of addressing the climate challenge, because of the technology piece; and the third is the technology piece. You’re starting to see again consensus on the importance of that and that was a big focus of the discussion. As Karen also mentioned, I think that one thing shows the degree of convergence on these issues.

Take a look at the different speeches by the different participants in this conference. You have the executive director of the UNFCCC, Mr. de Boer, who has put to rest this notion that the MEM process -- this major economies initiative -- has been somehow his rival. He is quoted as saying, “It is good to bring the major economies together, because this relatively small group of countries holds the key to tackling a big part of the problem.” Look at his speech, it was very, very supportive of what this initiative was trying to do and focused on many of the same issues -- technology, bringing the emerging economies together. So we think that was a positive element.

The final point that I wanted to make with regards to this convergence issue is that I also think that we are getting beyond a bit what I noted in the G8 context was the “Sinner-Saint dichotomy,” which there seems to be a bit of the notion that the Saints with regard to addressing climate change reside on the European continent and the Sinners were primarily over in North America. We reject this. We have a very strong record with regard to what we have been doing in the climate area as Karen mentioned last year.

We reduced absolutely the green house gas emissions by 1.3 percent and grew our economy by over 3 percent. That is a feat I am not seeing other countries having done. We think that moving beyond this and getting into a very serious discussion on how to address these issues, as Karen said: “action oriented and solutions oriented,” is what the MEM process is about and as I mentioned, we thought that that was a good beginning. So, we look forward to your questions and thanks again for coming.

QUESTION: Why are you here, other than to speak to us? Who are you meeting with, and where are you going after? Where as the meeting was only a couple of days ago in Washington, normally people are going to need a bit of time at digesting (inaudible) at what was discussed, so who are you meeting with and what are you discussing?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HARBERT: Well, the International Energy Agency, which is based here in Paris is having a regularly scheduled board meeting, beginning tomorrow, lasting for a day and an half. We will be giving our report on the conference there, but we do sit on the board of the IEA, the United States being the largest contributor to the IEA, and so we’re here for that which has long been scheduled and thought it would be an opportune to sit down with journalist here to appraised them almost in real time of the out comes of the meetings in Washington.

QUESTION: Apparently biofuels take up more energy to produce than to put out, and as a result there is a big controversy about that? What do you say about that? And the OECD, who brought out a big story on that.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HARBERT: On the area of biofuels this goes back to one of the principal drivers for solving the climate change challenge, which is we have to have and find other ways to produce biofuels.

Principally ethanol the United States reproduce it from corn, Brazil they produce it from sugar, but we are investing tremendous sums of money to find ways to transform things like saw dust, switch grass, plant waste, into ethanol for our second generation biofuels, which we think we will be able to see cost competitive with regular ethanol and being introduce into the market by 2012, five years from now.

There is no doubt that there is tremendous growth potential in the bio fuel market, and so we want to make sure that that growth happens in a balance way and that we invest in those second generations biofuels that will lessen the pressure on the energy markets expand the availability of the currently existing hydrogen carbons that are available and certainly go a long way to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector.

QUESTION: Balanced verses unbalanced production, the price of corn is increasing, why?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HARBERT: Well, we are seeing actually several interesting things, everybody has seized on the increase in the price of corn, since a lot of this growth has happened in the United States. Let me just explain a couple of things that are happening in the market. First, we are seeing more corn being planted more than ever before in the United States. Secondly, we are seeing more yields, per acre, we don’t use hectares, and we use acres. More yield per hectare, because of more in food agricultural technology and techniques, and improved farming techniques, which is good for land use a better steward of the land is being to bring more out and put back into the land and make it more fertile.

And you are also seeing right now, a pause in the ethanol market, because they are not sure how much more ethanol will be able to be produce overtime. We believe that in our country the maximum probably will be about 15 billion gallons. Right now were at 6. With improved agricultural techniques and some additional planting that’s going to be about the maximum of the market for the United States.

In order to meet our goals, we are replacing 20 percent of gasoline consumption with alternative renewable fuels. We have to craft the cellulose with ethanol challenge. Not just for the United States, but for the world over. If you look at what is happening worldwide in transportation. We have 700 million cars today on the road. We think we will have 1.2 billion cars on the road in the next 25 years. They have to run on something other than gasoline. So we believe hybrids have a huge potential, flexi-fuel vehicles obviously are becoming much more into the market, bio diesel has a role to play. There is not one single fuel that is going to be the solution.

Over time we hope it is all powered on hydrogen. Which is why we are investing about a billion dollars right now into hydrogen, but that’s a longer term solution. That’s not available today it won’t be available in 5 years. But cellouse ethanol may be. So we see ethanol right now as a bridge, a very useful bridge, but a bridge to the next generations of biofuels, which means than a bridge to the next set of solutions on hybrid cars, electricity driven cars, electricity hopefully made from more renewal fuels and nuclear energy.

We are going to have to have much more nuclear energy in our country and around the world to fuel this electricity demand and that will then be a bridge to perhaps a hydrogen economy, which will be a completely emissions free economy, so these have to build on each, which is why, unless you invest in technology, you will not have that ultimate solutions of an emissions free economy.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SULLIVAN: Just to add quickly, as Karen mentioned on the biofuels from our prospective, it is one component of diversifying energy, which we think is an important one.

We have a very robust initiative with Brazilians in the Western Hemisphere with regards to our joint cooperation, and with regard to our cooperation with third countries. And with regard to working on standards that will enable, and working with the EU on these standards, it will enable trade and biofuels to be more global, and to be more efficient.

So, but the issue you’ve raised is one we’ve seen that many people have raised with regard of concerns on food prices is something that we are keeping an eye on and are confident that markets will adjust accordingly.

QUESTION: The other thing is corn takes up a lot of water more than most crops. And water is finite too. You refer to nuclear just now. How will you do this?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HARBERT: Well, we have. This administration has long placed a priority on expanding use of nuclear power both in the United States and abroad. We have finally, there has not been a new nuclear plant built in the United States in over thirty years. We have received the first official application for a new license for a new nuclear plant just last week. And that has been because of a very robust public private partnership to restart our nuclear industry beginning with having new nuclear engineering programs in our country.

Investing in citing a licensing with industries, providing types of risk insurance for the nuclear industry, so we can really jump start this, because this is a critical component we feel to combating climate change.

Also, not last week, but the week before last, we hosted a meeting of 27 nations, in Vienna on the margins of the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency to formalize an agreement on principles of how nuclear power should be expanded to countries that don’t currently have it or anxious to get it. It’s called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. It was an initiative introduced by President Bush, a year and a half ago.

We have 11 new countries, and there were 6 original founding members of which the U.S. and France are two. And this is a way over the next coming years to find ways to expand nuclear power to the developing world. For them not to have to have the capacity to actually produce and refine uranium, and to be able to find ways to take that spent fuel back to those countries that actually have that existing capacity, thereby, expanding nuclear power but doing it on a proliferation resistant manner.

QUESTION: Are there targets set for the U.S.?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HARBERT: We don’t have any targets per say, I think the market is demonstrating it now has the willingness to step into the nuclear arena. If we did not have the 439 nuclear plants that we have right now in the world, the amount of CO-2 that would be put into the air, after this I’ll confirm these numbers, but I think it 2 billion tons of CO-2 per year. So, nuclear power both in the United States and abroad has a tremendous contribution to make to the environment and to burn house gas emissions.

We would like to see a number of new nuclear plants built in the United States, which is why we work with our regulatory commission to standardize designs. We work with the industry to find ways to buy down their risks. And we tried to find ways to actually make sure we’ve got that intellectual feed stock, those engineers to go into our industry. So I think we are looking at it both at the demand side and the supply side of really trying to have a nuclear renaissance in the United States to meet energy demands and climate change at the same time.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SULLIVAN: And given that we are in Paris, we should say that the example of France, in terms of the amount of electricity produced here is obviously quite impressive.

And that was another element, again of the major economies meeting where the different countries that were there, began by actually going over their different national plans. So, other countries were in the room actually discussing and learning from each other on different approaches to addressing the energy security and climate challenge, and that’s why, again, another reason why we thought the exercise and initiative started out very successfully and will continue to be so.

QUESTION: What about all the anti-nuclear movements all over? What do you do about that? Is there anything to be done about that, by the United States?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HARBERT: Well, I think it’s all about public education, and about the safety of nuclear power. We certainly have seen tremendous advances in technology and advanced technology.

QUESTION: The Germans are absolutely against nuclear, you must know from the meetings that you had. And the English, they are kind of like that.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HARBERT: Certainly, there is no one size fits all; there is no prescription for each country on how they have to make their own sovereign choices.

We are electing to have a big and broad diversified mix of energy. France has proven here the effectiveness of nuclear power. And I think over time we are going to see an inevitable growth in nuclear power, not only because it is safe and emissions free, but because we want to see those 1.6 billion people also have access to electricity in an environmentally sustainable way. And that has a big place for nuclear.

QUESTION: What do you see as French policy? Can you get any help from France?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HARBERT: I will take the second one first and we can share the first part of it. AREVA is already a resident in the United States; it has a fairly large operation in the Atlantic coast of the United States. It employs several thousand people already in the United States. Our market is wide open for nuclear power. There are a number of players that are residents in the United States. There are Japanese players, French players, American players, and I think that there is certainly room and growth for everybody to participate in new nuclear and the United States abroad.

We are not the only market for a huge expansion. Certainly, you are seeing a huge expansion in nuclear power in China. They plan on building 20 plants over the next 10 years and that’s just the beginning. That 20 are going to lead to 20 more, and 40 and 60. And so, worldwide there is tremendous growth potential for the few companies that have really excelled, of course, we know who all of them are.

In terms of French policy, I certainly can not speak on behalf of the French government. I think each country that was there and they provide very details submissions in advance, which were matrices forms, on their policies, their initiatives, and their research, and development investments. I encourage you to ask the French government to make those available to you. Which detail in, good detail, on everybody’s efforts, in what we attempted to do was to try and combine all of those to see over this life span of this initiative, where we could identify amongst these 17 economies, where were their gaps. We have all agreed on the problem, we’ve all agreed that we want to get to the solutions thru technologies and policies, if you look across the horizon, where are there some gaps and opportunities, and that’s what we try to give everybody a common base of understanding of about everybody is doing and not doing. And so, I think the French gave a very good contribution about the value of nuclear certainly, and I am sure their voices in the EU about the value of nuclear power combating climate change, as the EU articulate its own position it would be very, very helpful.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SULLIVAN: But it raises a broader point and that was clearly what came out of the first meeting by the major economies: addressing climate is going to be done through addressing the climate challenge and energy securities challenge, and this will done through a portfolio of different approaches that are different for different countries.

France obviously has a much different view of nuclear than, say, Germany does. And one of the things that I have learned from the French is that it is a very interesting model where you almost have an entire power generation sector that is coal free. I was surprised to learn over the course of the last several months coming to Paris the degree to which, what isn’t nuclear in France is actually covered a lot by hydro.

Again, the broader point of a portfolio different approaches, I think came out in the presentation by the different countries that addressing this very important issue is not going to be a one size fits all approach, its going to be a much more different portfolio, tailored portfolio.

QUESTION: Do you think you can reach these targets if you don’t have a binding agreement? You have not done that in this region.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HARBERT: Coming out of this process, first of all, we’ve agreed that we want to set a global goal…

QUESTION: Yes, but you can’t get it just by saying so.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HARBERT: And that will have to be underpinned by nationally defined binding strategies, and those binding strategies on a country by country, each nation…

QUESTION: Yes, but if they are not forced to do. Some do, and some don’t want to do so.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HARBERT: Well, if you look at a binding. Let’s look. We have programs in the United States that are mandatory and are binding, and you have a choice of either making it an incentive base or penalty based. We have both in the United States. If you don’t hit a target in one of our (inaudible word), you have a penalty or you have to buy yourself out. That is a penalty in essences. There are other ways to do it incensing adherence to the program. Every country has to have its own portfolio of approaches, which will include balanced sources and different ways to mitigate demand growth.

QUESTION: On the target of reduction 100 percent consumption of gasoline, the oil producers like Saudi Arabia and other countries argue that they are under pressure from the IEA to invest and put a lot of money to increase their production capacity. Why are they doing this if you are trying to reduce gas consumption?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HARBERT: Well, if energy demand is going up by over 50% over the next 25 years, all of that is certainly not going to be made up by alternative fuels. There is still a very important position for traditional and conditional hydrocarbons. We need more hydrocarbons into the market; we need more refining capacity to actually be able to produce the refine product that our economies need. So we have never thought and we have explained this to principle producing nations as this is a competition. It’s about expanding the portfolio of options under a period of extreme demand growth. And the introduction of some alternatives and renewable fuels into the market would expand the life span of those hydro carbons for the use of their economies and citizens. We see it as very rational approach. We have shared our policies with producing nations so that it is very, clearly, transparently understood what we are trying to do. We are not trying replace oil, in the short term. Like anything else, this is a finite resource, so over time; we have to be able to find ways to have a secure supply of energy. Two hundred years from now, when none of us are here, we want to make sure that there is still a supply of energy to fuel our economies and keep our children safe and happy.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SULLIVAN: And it also goes to the broader strategy that we mentioned earlier, diversification, both in terms of types and sources of energy supplies.

QUESTION: There are 3 things that stick to my mind – you talk about corn, and more production was yield. Does that imply genetically modified organisms?

And second of all, you talk about new hydro carbons, what’s a new hydro carbon?

And then the third thing – this is for you Sir, the U.S. leads in this field of combating green house gases and (inaudible word).

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HARBERT: Corn, GMO, I know that is a very big debate here in Europe. I don’t believe that debate is resonant in the United States, because the corn is immediately produced into an ethanol alcohol that produces gasoline, so it is not for human consumption, so I don’t think that enters into our debate back at the United States.

A new hydrocarbons, what I was trying to say is that new suppliers and new sources, so we are seeing for example, countries like Nigeria, Angola, Turkmenistan, Canada has tremendous opportunities with its oil sands. So, there are more sources of supplies out there. Saudi Arabia has more supplies, so, more supplies from existing producers, new suppliers and conventional and unconventional hydrocarbons.

And your last one was Mr. Sullivan?

QUESTION: What will the U.S. lead be?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SULLIVAN: Well, clearly think it is a very important leadership initiative on the part of the United States to bring in the major economies, who as I mention constitute 80% or more of the green house gas emissions globally, and we think that to the extent that we could use the influence of the United States to lead and bring these countries together.

As I mentioned, the President used the term “Major Economies” at the G8 when this initiative was discussed and endorsed by the G8 leadership. That is something that seems to have been lost in the press. The president sent out letters inviting to different leaders, inviting their personal representative to come to this conference. It seemed that if it was a bit of a surprise, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. This was discussed early among G8 leaders and the Outreach 5 countries back in May, and I can show you the text in the G8 leader statement that actually endorses this initiative. So we think that this was an important initiative for that very reason to bring the key countries together. We think that’s an important area of American leadership on this, and the commitment of the United States to move forward and to remain engaged on this issue in this process, but also on the UNFCCC.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HARBERT: Can I just add one sentence to that?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SULLIVAN: Sure.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HARBERT: We are also leading by example and investing in technology. The United States has invested $37 billion dollars in climate change research and technology over the last seven years, and the president, when he addressed this group of countries called for more financing to be available for the developing world, so that they could actually access these clean technologies. He said we need an international clean energy fund, and directed his Secretary of the Treasury to begin consultations with other countries about how and what it’s going to take to set up such a fund that would allow the developing countries to have access to clean energy technology on a more concessionary bases.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SULLIVAN: Here is a final leadership point that relates more to the U.S. private sector than the government. When mentioned the $37 billion, that’s U.S. government funds. But I think would be an interesting story is to actually look at the U.S. private sector with regard to venture capitol funds, private equity there is an entire focus on clean energy technology that is really moving very swiftly into the U.S. private sector. I don’t have any of the numbers, I think they are kind of hard to determine, but I would imagine that these numbers are going to, if they have not already, are going to soon dwarf to $37 billion that the government is focused on.

HOST: Really, the last two questions.

QUESTION: The meeting on September the 28^th was titled energy security and climate change – what is the relationship between security and climate change?

That was my first question. And from the U.S. viewpoint, this initiative, what will be the follow-up?

At a meeting last week, the U.S. signed a referendum with Jordan for Global Nuclear Partnership, but South Africa refuses to join. How does this fit in with the UN Voluntary Program and where is going on?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY SULLIVAN: Let me take the first one, very quickly. When you look at the President’s remarks at the conference, but also when you look at the G8 Leaders’ statement back in June, there is a clear recognition that the issues of climate change and energy securities are very closely interrelated. As a matter of fact, somebody might say, it’s a flip side of one coin. And I think one of the easiest ways to envision that is simply by reducing reliance on hydrocarbons will both help us address climate change and also will help us address our energy security issues.

So, I think that is a simply way of looking at it. But we think that their inter-related very significantly, as I mentioned, if you look at the G8 Leaders’ statement, the focus on that is a way one of the reasons we have pushed it to G8 looking to addressing it in an integrative way. Not just through environmental regulations, but through energy efficiency, technological development and deployment, and economic growth. So, I think that’s an area where you see furthering agreement, I made my point at the beginning, this issue on convergences on certain issues.

I also want to very quickly go back to the leadership point. I am glad you asked it, but we also very much recognize in Europe there has been a strong leadership with regard to addressing climate, we recognize that, and we appreciate that as well. So by mentioning examples of where we think the United States is lead on the climate challenge and energy and security challenge I am by no means implying that there hasn’t been other strong leadership and I think a lot of that leadership has been residing in Europe.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HARBERT: Quickly on the path forward. As we’ve agreed to before Bali, the Indonesians have invited the Ministries of Finance to meet before the climate meeting in Bali. We’ve agreed that amongst the major economies to provide technical input for the finance ministers to consider as they hold discussions on Bali about the broad range of issues, but including the economic implications of climate change. We agreed to convene this same group together after Bali. So, to take what came out of Bali, bring it into this group, which is a smaller more manageable group. What can we not take forward to accelerate the path to a 2012 framework based on what was discussed at Bali, and what was discussed at this meeting last week so we can form a consensus amongst these countries on a long term path, long term goal.