Remarks as Delivered by Deputy Secretary David Turk at the University of North Carolina CleanTech Summit

Thanks, Markus [Wilhelm], for the introduction. It's just phenomenal to be with you all. 

I know we're after lunch, and for some of us, this is a lower energy time of our day, so I'm going to try to make this interactive. I've never done interactive this way.  

I'd love to start—since it's March Madness, and we're here in North Carolina—and just do a little polling here to see where our audience is. So, we've got a game coming up, some of you may be noticing, at 2:45.  

[Laughter] 

North Carolina against Wagner. Who here thinks North Carolina is going to win?  

[Cheers] 

Does anybody think Wagner is going to win?  

Audience member: Yeah! 

[Laughter] 

All right. So, I have one more set of questions here: who thinks North Carolina is going to win the entire tournament on the men’s side?  

[Cheers] 

I know we’re here in the University of North Carolina, but we're not that far from Duke. I see one T-shirt. Who thinks Duke is going to win it all?  

[Cheers and booing] 

All right. NC State? Anybody here, NC State? 

[Smattering applause] 

All right, so far, so good on the interactive part.  

[Laughter] 

I've worked for many, many years—as Marcus said—in climate and clean energy. And sometimes it's quite daunting, the scale of the challenge. There's an opportunity there—there's huge opportunity there—as well, but the scale of the challenge in front of us.  

What science is telling us we need to do is to decarbonize and get to net zero by midcentury.  

For an advanced economy like ours, President Biden set a goal—rightfully so, in my opinion—to get us to net zero by 2050. Now, 2050 is not that far off, right? We're in 2024, that's 26 years.  

And that's net zero. That's decarbonizing. Not just electricity—and we've made significant progress in our country on electricity. But it's also transportation—which is actually the largest segment of our emissions right now in the U.S. It's industry, all types of industry. It’s buildings, et cetera, et cetera.  

For my second kind of polling, interactive question to you all: One of the pieces of analysis that I felt most proud of that I did when I worked at the International Energy Agency, was something called Tracking Clean Energy Progress. And what the analysis was, was to break up all of these sectors—transportation, industry, electricity, the power sector—50 different sectors, 50 different technologies, and compare the progress of each one on that net zero by midcentury trajectory.  

50 different sectors. So, it's solar. It's wind. It's hydrogen. It's integration technologies. It's—you name it, it is part of [those] 50 sectors.  

How many of those sectors do you think, right now—the latest numbers were for 2023—are on track towards that net zero trajectory?  

The cost reductions, the deployment numbers, it's a little bit of art that goes in with the science part of it. How many of those 50 do you think are on track right now, at the scale, at the pace that we need to be on in order to be successful?  

Audience member: Zero! 

Audience member: Three! 

Audience member: Five! 

Audience member: One!  

It ends up being three. So, three of 50 different technologies and sectors are on track.  

Those three are: solar. Solar has made remarkable progress. We're up to, in our country, about 4% of our electricity generated from solar. That's up quite a bit. We had a record year last year, in 2023. The more exciting number is, if you look just two years in the future, we're going to get up to 7%.  

So, 4% to 7% just in two-year period of time. Remarkable progress. A lot of folks that worked on this for years and years, in laboratories, getting it out there, getting utility scale, putting it on people's homes as well. Remarkable progress. 

EVs is another bright spot. EVs right now, globally, are on track. And in our own country, we've quadrupled the number of EVs sold since President Biden took office. We're up to about 10%. One out of every 10 cars sold right now is an EV or a plug-in hybrid. In other parts of the world, they're even further along. Europe's up about 23% of their vehicles sold being EVs. China's actually over 30% right now. Norway's at something like 80% right now. They're the world leader in terms of EV penetration going forward.  

The third, just so you're keeping track, is lighting. We've made remarkable progress in lighting. LEDs. Think of the cost reductions, and think of what we've done on that front.  

But we've got 47 different sectors and technologies that aren't on track yet, that need more innovation, that need cost reduction, that need deployment going forward.  

What it means is, if you're interested in a career in this space, there's a lot of jobs to curate. Job opportunities. Because we need so much progress, because we need to focus, and there really is no alternative to being successful here.  

Now, here's another question for you all—and I think this is a bright spot of what's happened over the last several years on climate and clean energy. We've got around 200 or so countries around the world. I want you to guess how many of those countries’ [leaders] have made net zero commitments by midcentury. Some have made it by 2050. Developing countries can be a little bit after that, depending on how they look at their numbers.  

But how many countries out of 200 countries have made net zero commitments, their leaders have made net zero commitments? Any guesses?  

Audience member: 50! 

Audience member: 15! 

Audience member: 190! 

190! Alright, we’ve got a very optimistic 190. 

Audience member: 116! 

Audience member: 75! 

It’s actually 140.  

Audience members: Wow. 

Pretty impressive, right? 140 countries. That's the U.S., China's made a net zero commitment by 2060, a number of key countries around the world have made net zero commitments.  

Now that's impressive. And a lot of people are responsible for that. A lot of folks have held their leaders accountable to make those kinds of commitments going forward.  

But it's one thing to make a commitment. It's another thing to actually deliver, right? To actually do it in the real world, at the pace at the scale that we need to deliver.  

In the U.S., our trajectory toward net zero to 2050 takes us to a 50% reduction by 2030, off the 2005 baseline. So, 50% reduction. That is daunting. That's a lot of work to do.  

But I want to leave you with this positive note—and there's a couple more questions embedded in here.  

Before this president, before historic legislation was passed over the last few years, what trajectory do you think we were on?  

We would have been reducing our emissions. We actually reduced our emissions 4.1% in the U.S. last year. That is a pretty impressive number, especially with healthy GDP growth going forward. What trajectory you think we were on before historic legislation was passed?  

The IRA, the BIL—all the things that I hope you've heard of—and if you haven't heard of it, I'm happy to talk about it, I'll share a little bit more about what we're trying to do.  

20%. 20% was the trajectory, 20% reductions. That's not 50%—but it's not nothing, right? 

[That’s] because of all sorts of work done in states, federal government, other kinds of things like that. That's before this President came in, before we had historic legislation passed. And now we're executing on this historic legislation.  

So: Inflation Reduction Act. It does reduce inflation, but it also is the biggest climate bill, the biggest clean energy bill— not just in the U.S.’s history—but it's the biggest bill ever, single piece of legislation ever, in humanity's existence, to really deal with climate change.  

We're talking tax incentives across the board, 30% or even higher, depending on the adders, for 10-plus years. That is certainty we've never had in our country, a wind at the back. Wind, hydro, geothermal, you name it, on that technology area.  

Our department was given $100 billion in grant money, extraordinarily, outside of our normal budget process to do all sorts of grant work. Hydrogen Hubs, helping folks in rural communities, helping Tribes, helping schools.  

We just announced yesterday another $180 million going into schools to try to replace their boilers, to try to bring solar PV, to try to do installation. Easy things that are going to make it better for students in classrooms, but also save electricity and promote carbon reductions at the same time.  

We've got a loan program. Literally hundreds of billions of dollars. It was our federal loan program at the Department of Energy that helped Tesla get up and running back in early days. Elon Musk doesn't like to talk about that very often, but it was actually a federal loan that helped that company.  

[Laughter] 

And this is all very targeted. This is all supporting entrepreneurs, supporting companies, supporting states, supporting local communities. Do what you want to do, but just do it quicker. Do it at pace, what we need to do.  

So, if we were headed for a 20% reduction in our emissions, with the Inflation Reduction Act—there’s another bill, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Legislation,  

But just one session of Congress, and one presidential term—assuming we execute, and we need to execute, we need to implement—we've gone from a 20% reduction trajectory to what number? What do people think? This will be my last polling question. 

Audience member: 45! 

Audience member: 40! 

Audience member: 60! 

Audience member: 32! 

32%. Very precise.  

It's actually 40%, if we could put the slide up on the screen. 40%. 

So, this red is the trajectory our country was on before this President took over, before the legislation were passed.  

The blue is the trajectory we need to be on. That gets us to net zero by 2050. For those sitting in the back, it’s the very far right. That is the net zero trajectory.  

That green is the modeling—depending on how we interpret provisions, depending on how we execute and implement—that green is the trajectory we're now on.  

So, just want to leave you with that sense of hope and optimism, that when there is this concerted effort, folks that step up, we can pass legislation, we can put policy in place that allows us to get from that red to that green.  

Now, we're not done. We need to get to the blue. We need to be on the blue trajectory. There's more work to do. There's an awful lot more opportunity to do. There's 47 other sectors and technology areas that aren't on track yet. There's room for innovation. There's room for entrepreneurship.  

What's going to make the difference here– and there's nothing inevitable about failure and there's nothing inevitable about success, right? We can easily slip back up into the red, but we can also go down into the blue.  

We've got agency. We've got control over this. It's folks making a difference. It's everybody as voters, it's everybody as activists in their communities. It's folks making a career, to be an engineer, to be an entrepreneur, or to start up a new company, to get into this line of work one way or another. There's huge opportunity here. And this is what makes the difference between the blue or the red and somewhere in between. 

All right, well, thank you for your– the interaction. Thank you for your time and attention.  

And I want to thank folks in particular who have made careers in the clean energy space, in the climate space. I know [there's] a lot of phenomenal folks who have literally been living and breathing and getting us into that blue and onto that green trajectory going forward. 

For young people here, for students here—and we're going to bring three of them up here and have a little bit of a discussion here for you all—I hope you consider a career in climate. I hope you consider a career in clean energy.  

I have found it to be [an] incredibly exciting area, incredibly fulfilling. It's literally taken me all over the world. I lived in Paris for five years working on clean energy at the International Energy Agency. That's pretty cool. I've had a chance to be [a] Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change, working with countries around the world.  

And now I get the pleasure of being the number two at the Department of Energy, with all of that funding, with all of that influx of talent. We've actually hired 1,000 people to do all this work, to try to help state and local governments and the private sector do things at scale.  

Phenomenally interesting career for those who are thinking about what they want to do with their lives as well.  

All right, so we've got some students, come on up...