Condoleezza Rice on Energy & Oil Secretary of State

Develop oil & gas resources, for energy independence

Strong investment in renewable energy like wind and solar

• When you think about America's energy needs, which of the following solutions comes closest to your opinion?
• A. Strong investment in renewable energy like wind and solar
• B. More drilling than investment in renewables (mix of both solutions)
• C. More investment in renewable than drilling (mix of both solutions)
• D. Strong focus on offshore drilling and allowing drilling in federal lands including wildlife reserves

Kyoto Protocol fatally flawed, but address climate change

In 2001, the President wrote to four Republican senators who had asked the administration to clarify its position on limiting greenhouse pollutants. I told the President we needed to change one sentence, which criticized the Kyoto Protocol in the harshest possible terms and suggested we would have nothing to do with it. I wanted to add mitigatin language saying that even though we could not support the treaty because it was fatally flawed, we would work with our allies to address the problem of climate change. But the President said, "It's too late."

In fairness to the President, I think he had thought of the letter as addressing a DOMESTIC issue for our Congress. But I knew better. We suffered through this issue over the years: drawing that early line in the sand helped to establish our reputation for "unilateralism." We handled it badly.

Diversify supply to non-carbon-based sources

A: Well, we need a comprehensive energy policy, and President Bush has been talking about a comprehensive energy policy practically since the first day that he was elected. It’s very important that we diversify supply. That means that we have to find way --energy sources that are not carbon based. That’s why alternative sources of energy, new technologies will be very important. We simply have put ourselves into a situation in which it’s hard to break our addiction to oil. We’re not going to get out of it quickly, I’m afraid, unless--and it’s high time to get started on the diversification of our energy resources.

Increase refining capacity & domestic resources; use nuclear

A: It is unfortunate that we continue--while we say that we want to be less addicted to foreign oil, which has been one of the president’s goals--we say we want to be less addicted to foreign oil, but then we say to oil producers, “You have to increase supply,“ rather than thinking about what we can do at home to increase supply. And of course, the ability to use our domestic resources, our domestic sources of oil would be a very important part of that. Nuclear energy is another clean technology that we should be using and exploring. We need to increase our refining capacity. It has been a problem for us to be able to refine. And we also need to have exploration at home.

Reducing our reliance on oil; it distorts world politics

Bring to market transformational energy technologies

1. The International Methane to Markets Partnership
2. The International Partnership for a Hydrogen Economy
3. The Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum
4. The Generation IV International Forum
5. The Global Earth Observation initiative.