 I'm David Pumphrey. I'm a senior fellow with the Energy and National Security Program, and it's my pleasure to open this event today to have a discussion about the energy and climate partnership of the Americas. And for me, this is actually quite close to my heart. For a number of years in the 1990s, we made a run at doing this. And it was a very important effort to try to really build partnerships and create integration throughout the hemisphere and energy. Intervening developments spelled the end for that process. And I'm very pleased to see that in the Summit of the Americas, President Obama relaunched this initiative to really build a partnership so that all the countries in the region can begin to understand what their pathway is to a low-carbon, secure, and energy future that supports their economic development. And I think that's really what this is all about. It's a sharing of experiences and approaches so that you can learn to adapt to every country's individual needs and desires on moving forward. So without much further ado, what I'd like to do is go ahead and get the program started. We were going to go through all of the speakers and then do a Q's and A's at the end so the speakers have been admonished on the length of time so that they don't do the usual trick of filling up all the time with their comments so that there's no hard questions from the audience. Peter, do you want to go ahead and start the introductions? OK, and Peter D'Shazo will now take over to do the introductions of the speakers as we move forward. Thanks, David. Welcome, everyone. My name is Peter D'Shazo. I'm the director of the Americas program at CSIS. We're delighted to have you all here. We'll get started with our discussion. We'll begin with remarks by Mr. David Sandelow, assistant secretary for policy and international affairs of the Department of Energy. And we'll go from there. Thank you very much. Well, thanks very much, David. Thanks very much, Peter. Thanks to all of you for being here. It's a great crowd and I hope to speak well of interest in this topic. I'm particularly excited to be here because I think, and recalling as David spoke, I think it was working on these topics that I first met David. It's good to see a lot of old friends in the audience and a lot of new ones as well. As many people here know, in April of 2009, President Obama announced the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas down at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago. And I'm just going to briefly kick this off by talking a little bit about that initiative and then what will be happening here in Washington next week on this initiative, which is, I think, quite exciting. The President's vision under the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas is threefold, to promote clean energy, to enhance energy security, and to fight energy poverty in the hemisphere, to do that by sharing best practices and cooperating on technology research, development, and deployment. The overarching goal of the ECPA, as we call it, the ECPA, is to foster partnerships. And I underscore the word partnerships to foster partnerships among governments, industry, and civil societies to promote clean energy projects, sport economic growth. There are five priority areas that governments so far have identified, energy efficiency, renewable energy, cleaner fossil fuels, infrastructure, and ending energy poverty. I'm going to underscore that this is a hemispheric wide effort. This is not a US government project, and that's reflected by my colleagues and friends here on the panel. And it's not just a government-wide. It's not just a government project. It's also a process that involves civil society. It involves businesses. It involves NGOs. It involves collaboration with academia. And the effort is to really make a difference, to launch concrete projects and programs that will help make a difference for the lives of people in the hemisphere. So following up on the announcement on this topic in April of 2009 in Trinidad and Tobago, a meeting was held in Lima, Peru last June among all countries of the hemisphere. At that meeting, among other things, the Low Carbon Communities of the Americas program was launched. That Low Carbon Communities of the Americas program has already led to programs on energy efficiency in the Caribbean, centers in Costa Rica, a wind project in Dominica, a biofuels project in Colombia, and more. All of which leads into what will be happening here next week, which will be very exciting. We have a two-day meeting under the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas. The first day is going to be the Inter-American Development Bank, where we will have representatives from civil society, from businesses and NGOs and others, and several hundred people coming together to talk about what we can do to advance all these objectives. The second day will be a ministers-only meeting at the OAS, where we have several dozen energy ministers from the hemisphere who will be here, talking about exactly the same topics. So that is your basic sketch. I'm going to follow Peter's admonition to be brief and turn it. Am I introducing my friend and colleague to the left? Are you doing that? OK. Peter's got it. Thanks very much, and happy to take questions after this, everybody. Thank you very much. I'm going to be bouncing back and forth here. It's a pleasure to introduce Mr. David Goldwyn, International Energy Coordinator from the Department of State. Afternoon, everyone. Pleasure to be back here at CSIS and with my good friend David Sandalo and my colleagues from the diplomatic community. David's explained what ECPA is wearing my State Department hat. I want to talk just a little bit about why it matters to the United States, why it's really unique, and then why it should matter to you, whether you're from the think tank community or the investment community or from the media. Why does ECPA matter to the United States? For the United States, this hemisphere remains critical to US energy security. Three of our top suppliers of oil come from this hemisphere. Two of our top suppliers of gas, some by pipe and some by LNG, come from this hemisphere. Electricity comes to this country from hydropower and from nuclear power from other countries. Two of the major biofuels producers in the world, the United States and Brazil, come from this hemisphere. So for us, for energy security, this hemisphere matters enormously. Second, as all of you know, this hemisphere matters because they are our friends, our allies, our major trading partners, and kinsmen to more than a third, probably, of our population. So the fate of the hemisphere, and we're talking about jobs, growth, development, prosperity, opportunity, depends for much of the hemisphere on access to electricity. And we want that electricity to be affordable, and we want it to be plentiful, and we want it to be scalable, and we want it to be friendly to the climate. But it's a huge challenge. And as goes the hemisphere and that access, so goes their economy, so goes all of our prosperity. So it's important for that reason. And so from a United States point of view, working with our friends to advance development in energy and in climate advances our own interests. Second, why is ECPA unique? For years, you have heard from the United States government that we want partnership, that we want a relationship of respect, we want one that is mutual. And ECPA is about really creating an organization or an organism that tries to demonstrate or really embody that spirit of partnership and respect. There is no secretariat. We are not driving to a single statement. There is no one size fits all. Every subregion of the hemisphere is different. So what ECPA is, is it's the Facebook community of energy and climate. There is a low carbon development community. There is an energy efficiency community. There is a heavy oil and making it be produced more efficient community. And countries join the initiative that they want to lead or they want to be part of. And for our part of the United States, we contribute to some of these, we lead some of these, we watch some of these. But this is about tapping the ingenuity of the hemisphere. And we have already seen, and I won't steal the thunder of my colleagues, leadership from all these countries in different areas. So it is unique, this multiple geometry, this Facebook concept, is about creating a platform to elevate leadership from the community, both from the countries and from the companies and from their civil societies. And as you will hear from the initiatives that have been taken, even in the run-up to this ministerial, it is working phenomenally well. Last, I would say, and I won't talk about the initiatives that the State Department will launch, although it's important to say that in addition to DOE's phenomenal technical expertise, we're also bringing the Peace Corps, EPA, United States Department of Agriculture, the Trade and Development Agency, the U.S. Geological Survey, Housing and Urban Development, all of the agencies that deal with energy-related challenges in our country will be bringing initiatives to the table, and the Secretary will talk about them. Last, why you should care. If you are an investor in this hemisphere, you should care because these issues are being brought to ministerial level. If you are a potential investor in this hemisphere, you are seeing a continent in transition, and whether you're in the electricity business, or whether you're in the technology business, or you're in the oil and gas business, or you're in the nuclear business, or you're in services that are related to electricity, or just an investor who wants cheap electricity or affordable electricity in lots of places, then what you are gonna see is the policies that are gonna create the platform for your investment. And if you care about the environment and you care about development, you're gonna see the development path forward, led by the countries of the hemisphere that will tell you how you will see energy integration in the Caribbean, energy integration in Central America, linkages between South America and Central America, and how you will see urban development grow but in a different path than we've done before. So it's remarkable that it's one year old and that it's already working. But I think as you'll hear today, it's something new, but something we're quite excited about. Thank you.