 I'm happy to be with you today. And before these awards and before we present them, I want to recognize one person. He's not getting an award today, but without him, the Navy would not be where we are on energy. And we wouldn't be winning the types of awards that we have. The Navy, the Department of the Navy, is one more presidential awards and Federal Energy Management Program awards over the last dozen years than any other agency or military service. And one of the main reasons for that is Bill Taylor. I was visiting with him on the way in just briefly. He and I came to the Navy about the same time. I was commissioned in 1969. He came into the Navy in 1971. He has had more perseverance than I did. I had a little gap in service from 72 to 09. Bill has stuck with it for 42 years. And he's retiring on November the 2nd. And he's had a major impact on a lot of things that the Navy has done, including as early as the late 80s the geothermal plant at China Lake. So Bill was for alternative energy before alternative energy was cool or hot or in the public consciousness. I often say that the Navy has led in changing energy use from sail to coal, from coal to oil, and pioneered the use of nuclear. I think the rumors that Bill was around for each one of those transitions are probably untrue. But I do want to thank him for all his years of service for the great contributions that he's made, wishing fair winds and following seas, and say that even though your retirement is well earned, you will be sorely missed. So come up here and I'll give Bill a hand. I'm happy to take part in today's ceremony because beside just being an acknowledgment of the excellent work being carried out across the Department of the Navy, these awards demonstrate the progress we've made in the last three and a half years to change the way we think about, we produce, and we use energy. Almost exactly three years ago, I proposed some very ambitious energy goals to improve our navies, our Marine Corps, and our nation's energy security. And when I see the dedication, the commitment that's been demonstrated by the award winners today and by a whole lot more people across the Department of the Navy, I'm confident, absolutely confident that we're going to reach all these goals, including the most comprehensive that by no later than 2020, at least half of all energy, both a float and a shore, will come from non-fossil fuel sources. 50 years ago, over 50 years ago, President John Kennedy stood before a joint session of Congress and announced a plan to put a man on the moon before the end of that decade. That was a great plan. But when he announced it, nobody had any idea of how to get it done. There were no systems in place. We didn't have the rockets. We didn't have the vehicles, the landers. We had nothing. But that's why he did it. And a year later, at Rice University, he said, and I'm quoting, we chose to go to the moon in this decade, not because it is easy, but because it is hard, because that challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win. And we all know how that worked out. 1969, Neil Armstrong was the first human to set foot on the moon within the decade that President Kennedy had laid out as a go. And I think that the energy goals and beliefs are similar in a lot of ways to that goal of a half century ago. US Navy and US Marine Corps pursuing alternative energy and energy efficiency, not because it's easy, not because it's green, not even because it's good for the environment, although those are good side effects. Why we do it is to be a more effective military force, better able to accomplish the mission that the nation gives us. And we're going to achieve these goals. And to paraphrase President Kennedy, we're unwilling to postpone those goals, and we intend to win. And you know the volatility and the fragility of the global energy market and the economic and security ramifications that has for the United States from being over-reliant on foreign sources of fossil fuels or vulnerabilities that we have to address now. We are decreasing the amount of foreign fossil fuels that we use. In fact, we're to the lowest level in a couple of decades in terms of importing oil. We're a million barrels a day lower this year than we were last year. But even if we could produce all our oil domestically, oil is still the global commodity, and it's traded based on speculation and rumor a lot of times. So the price spikes, the other vulnerabilities, the fact that we still buy oil from countries that may not have our best interests at heart of vulnerabilities that we have to fight every day by taking bold steps to make sure that we reach these goals. And those sorts of bold steps have been taken by the award winners here today. And I'm going to mention a couple of them just as examples. All the award winners today have richly earned it. And the several that I'm going to mention have as well joint-based Pearl Harbor Hickam in Hawaii. They're being honored today for converting alternative energy into many megawatts of usable power, harness the strength of the island with thermal, ocean thermal, and with wave energy, harness the Hawaii and sun with solar energy and solar photovoltaic power. When it's being constructed, it's going to produce 10 megawatts of energy. Now, Hawaii has a special reason to do this because it's the state most dependent on imported oil. And for that reason, energy costs there in the country. And it's got a big military presence, Navy, Marines, and all the other services. Right now, Hawaii is in a partnership with the US Department of Energy. And it's transforming the state into a model for greater energy independence. And the things that the Navy Marine Corps team are doing there are helping make that model a reality. We talked about price spikes. And if you want to just get some arithmetic into this, for every dollar a barrel of oil goes up in price, it costs the Navy $30 million in additional fuel costs. In 2012, we had an extra fuel bill of half a billion dollars, $500 million, because simply the forecast didn't see how quickly the price of oil is going to rise. Now, there are not many places to go get that money because there's not really any extra money. The only places really to go get it are operations and training. So it means we steam less, we fly less, we train less. And enough to start platforming. Now, those are decisions that neither I nor any secretary wants to make. So there ought to be a different way. And that different way is by using fuels that hopefully will be less prone to these price spikes that will certainly be domestically produced. And we also, in addition to that, have got to be more efficient. Do exactly the same things just use less fuel. And one of our award winners has been a great example of how to do that, USS Macon Island. I've mentioned Macon Island in so many of my speeches. Tom Friedman wrote a column in The New York Times about Macon Island. And I went out. I was supposed to go visit Macon Island last December off the coast of Malaysia, but the weather did not cooperate with us. The captain at the time was an Ole Miss graduate like I am. And evidently, they had a pretty amazing cake that I missed. I did. And those of you who have served in Asia will understand this. I did get to eat durian that day. That's not something you ever want to do. They say, if you get past the awful smell, that the taste is great. Not so much. Anyway, I went to see Macon Island last week in Port in San Diego. They were just back from deployment. Seven-month deployment. We had budgeted $33 million for fuel for the Macon Island during that deployment. They spent $18 million. They saved almost half of the fuel by using a hybrid electric drive at speeds of under 12 knots. Over the lifetime of that ship, at 2010 oil prices, when the ship was launched, it'll save over a quarter of a billion dollars just in fuel costs. And while that's important, one thing I found when I was on Macon Island was the main propulsion, the officer in charge of the main propulsion, was one of the most enthusiastic people I've ever met. And he kept talking about how, beside the hybrid drive, how the whole crew had gotten involved and how third classes would come in and say, I've found a way we can save some energy. I've found a way we can reduce the energy that we're using here or here and how it was almost a competition to see just how far they could go in doing exactly the same missions with exactly the same high standards, with exactly the same proficiency just using less energy and how that had taken hold as a culture on Macon Island just like it has to take hold and it is taking hold across the Navy and Marine Corps as a whole. So beside the big things that we're doing, like putting hybrid drives on big-deck amphibs and now beginning to retrofit them onto our destroyers, it's the little things, like including energy efficiency in the plan of the day or on the 1MC when they get announced. And I also want to talk about some other ships that aren't award winners today, but that participated in RIMPAC this summer and demonstrated the Great Green Fleet. Nimitz was the carrier and the other members of the strike group were Chaffee, Chunghoon, Princeton, Henry J. Kaiser, and carrier Air Wing 11. We bought biofuels, domestically produced biofuels, put them in the logistics chain, got them to the Great Green Fleet, got them to RIMPAC, put it on the oiler, the Henry J. Kaiser, and got it to the ships and the aircraft. Every single type of aircraft that flew off that carrier flew that day on a 50-50 blend of biofuel and avgas, every single ship. The carrier was nuclear, everybody else operating on a 50-50 blend of marine diesel and biofuel. I flew out on a helicopter that operated on a 50-50 blend. The Australians sent over a helicopter and got refueled. We did air-to-air refuelings that day. But I think the most amazing thing is that biofuel in that supply chain, we didn't change a thing. We didn't change a single setting on an engine. We didn't change a single thing in the supply chain. It was absolutely the same way that we would have done, the same amount of oil. The only difference, when I was talking to people in that strike group, the only difference that some of the engineers said they were noticing was, and the Air Force has a study that sort of confirms this, is that biofuels tend to burn cleaner. And so the engines produce a little more power, and there's a little less wear. But other than that, and that's a good thing, other than that, there was absolutely no difference. So at all our Navy and Marine Corps ships and bases, our shore installations from Panama City to Pendleton would be island and Indian island, blunt and Paris island. We're trying to change a culture and promote a culture of energy efficiency and using different kinds of energy. And I want to say a word about our Marine winners here. The first thing you think about when you think about the United States Marines is probably not art and environmentalists. But I have to tell you, the things that they have done in the US, like Camp Pendleton and 29 Palms, where they've invested real heavily in metering equipment so that we know how to monitor and then how to optimize energy use at Paris Island. That is bringing new energy technology from the top in skylights to the bottom and radiant heating in the floors. And it's changed a culture there, too. And it's gone to the battlefield. Over the past three years, I've been to Afghanistan nine times. And on every single trip, I've seen some of the things the Marines are doing, including in some of the heaviest fighting around Sangen. Third battalion, fifth Marines, reduce their overall energy use by 20%, some outposts, reduce their fossil fuel usage by 90%, and two outposts used no fossil fuel during their deployment. We've got the proof that just by doing solar blankets, roll up, put it in your pack, and use them to recharge radios and GPS, that a Marine company can save almost 700 pounds of batteries. So they don't have to carry those 700 pounds of batteries around with them. And they also don't have to be resplied every couple of days with new batteries. And so the Marines have institutionalized this and that they now have ways with the experimental fobs that they do twice a year to find best technology, best practice, and get it out to the fleet. The last three years of these awards have shown incredible success because of the actions of our award winners. We have the same type of goal that America had 50 years ago in the 1960s. We have a goal that we want to achieve before the end of this decade. And we will achieve it because of the courage, the bold action, the innovation that our winners have shown here today for almost 237 years, 237 years next week, and for the Marines 237 years next month. We have projected our power. We have protected our nation. We're on a path to create a new energy future, which will increase the security of this country because that's what the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps have always done. Innovate, adapt, make the future more secure and the world a better place. Semper Fortis, Semper Fidebs. Thank you.