America’s Energy Strategy Must Be Shared
by Asia
by Samuel Wright Bodman
U.S. Secretary of Energy
In December 2004 President George W. Bush nominated me as the nation’s
11th secretary of energy. I accepted with the understanding that I would focus
on the need to enhance America’s energy security. I believe we have made
significant progress. We have put considerable resources, both in terms of dollars
and man-hours, into expanding supply, improving efficiency and developing clean
sources of alternative energy. But competition for resources coming from the
world’s developing economies, including China’s and India’s,
has raised the stakes for the United States.
America must pursue an energy strategy not limited by its borders. Our
energy future is not something we can determine alone; the projected increase
in the global demand for energy – more than 50 percent by 2030 – makes
this a certainty.
We can lead the world toward a shared and secure energy future that includes
traditional sources as well as clean, renewable and alternative sources
of energy. The large Asian economies, whether developed like South Korea’s
and Japan’s or developing like China’s and India’s, must
also come to terms, as the United States is doing, with the need for greater
energy efficiency, environmentally responsible energy production and new
energy technologies.
America and Asia have a shared energy future, one in which we may all
prosper if we work together. Because world conditions are changing, we
must find ways to work together to confront resource nationalism, limited
access and infrastructure constraints that effectively limit production
to something less than what the world requires. Further, we must consider
all this in the context of global climate change and a carbon-constrained
future.
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