Remarks as Delivered by Deputy Secretary David Turk at SelectUSA Summit

Thank you to SelectUSA for bringing together such critical actors and leaders and stakeholders at such a pivotal moment for our planet and certainly for our clean energy economy.

As I stand here today, we're just 26 years away from when we need to achieve net zero, in our economy and around the world. And frankly, we’re just not where we need to be at the pace we need to be on.

I had a chance to work at the International Energy Agency before taking this job as the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy. One of my favorite pieces of analysis was to look at 50 different sectors and technologies—across transportation, across electricity, across industry, across buildings—and undertake an analysis of which ones of those sectors, which ones of those technology areas, was on track for the kind of progress we need to be [to] achieve net zero in 26 years.

The short answer is: only three of those 50 technology areas were on track at the pace, at the scale, at the cost reduction to activate the deployment that we need them to be on.

To go along with those challenges—and I think this is what you all are here today for—there's a huge, huge amount of opportunity.

You just heard it from the phenomenal group of governors that we just heard from.

There is a global race to the top. Make no mistake. There is a global race to the top happening right now, in a market projected to be worth $23 trillion U.S. dollars by the end of this decade.

And for our part, the U.S. is taking on first-of-a-kind challenges—to buy down costs, to diversify supply chains—not only in our country, but around the world.

And President Biden's leadership is making the United States an absolutely irresistible destination for clean energy investment, overseeing an unprecedented industrial strategy for clean energy powered by incentives [including] tax credits, ten-year tax credits—and the certainty that those tax credits provide.

In our Department alone: $100 billion in grant money. We're in the midst of partnering with companies, including many companies here today, and companies around the world. A loan program that has now $290 billion in our pipeline.

I want to show you a map. This is the scale of what's happening across our country, the economic opportunities that are happening across our country.

Since the President signed the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we’ve seen more than 600—and you see those represented on the map in front of you—600 new or expanded factories across 44 states.

And I want to emphasize this point to the folks who are here in attendance at SelectUSA: more than half of all the clean energy manufacturing investments between 2021 and 2023 in our country were either foreign companies or joint ventures. Over half.

That is a huge, huge economic opportunity, an irresistible place to invest going forward.

Now, I want to give you a few specific examples of dots. And I could do this for each and every one of these 600 dots that you see represented on the screen.

The first one is a project in Plymouth, Michigan—and I know we just had our Michigan governor on, her team was incredibly excited about this project, as well as the other projects in Michigan—where Nel Hydrogen, a Norwegian company, is piloting a new hydrogen manufacturing—a clean hydrogen manufacturing process.

I was able to actually announce this project last year on this very stage. Since then, in March of this year, I got a chance to see firsthand its impact when I visited Macomb County Community College, where students are training for jobs at Nel.

I announced $50 million in federal funding for the project, part of a broader $750 million investment by our Hydrogen [and] Fuel Cell Technologies Office for over 50 projects across 24 states. Again, just another data point and nugget on the scale of investment that we're making from the federal government under President Biden's leadership.

Let me give you another example. This one is [the] Wieland copper recycling plant in Shelbyville, Kentucky, which I had a chance to visit with the governor there in April. It’s a German company, producing critical minerals for EV and semiconductor supply chains.

During my visit, I announced DOE awarded a $270 million [award] through our Industrial Demonstrations [Program] to expand their recycling capabilities.

Good for the environment, good for jobs, good for our diversity of supply chains.

In total, our first round of these Industrial Demonstration Program funding delivered $6 billion in federal dollars for 33 demonstration projects across 20 different states. And we've got another round of funding on the way.

With many of our programs, we're in the midst of our first round of funding announcements, and then we're rolling out our second funding [opportunities]. And some we have even another tranche, so if you didn't get in the first round, there's opportunities in the second and third rounds.

Another example: this pin is a NOVONIX facility in Chattanooga, Tennessee that will produce graphite—synthetic graphite—for 400,000 EVs per year.

I visited this site last month to announce that DOE and the IRS are allocating over $100 million to NOVONIX, an Australian company, through our Qualifying Advanced Energy Project Tax Credits program, also known as “48C.”

In this program, you can get a 30% base tax credit, which can go up to 50% if you do things like meet requirements for domestic content and locate your project in a low-income community.

The best part? These tax credits are on offer for 10 years. That is a level of certainty you don't see every day.

The second round of 48C credits has even more funding available, and certainly encourage you to apply.

And I'm happy to have our Department and others in the U.S. government point you in the right direction for finding out more information on this.

So, let's just look at this map. Again, we're just looking at all of these opportunities so far. And again, this is 600 new and expanded factories, which ended up being over $200 billion in private sector investment.

And I want to emphasize this point: there is more, there is more, there is more yet to come.

In fact, some estimate that the tax incentives that President Biden has been able to put in place could bring up to a trillion dollars [in private investment].

Each of these projects, each of these 600 projects, helps us to diversify supply chains, strengthen global energy security, and make much-needed progress in the climate fight.

Now, let's just take a step back and see what this scale of investment, what this level of opportunity, economic opportunity, means for what we need to do on the climate front.

You see in front of you a graph of U.S. emissions. This is just our emissions in our country—a significant portion of global emissions, but a relatively decreasing portion of global emissions. We're down about 13 or 14% of global emissions.

You see our historical trajectory. Our emissions are going down. But they're not going down nearly as fast as they need to.

Before President Biden took office, you see the red line in front of you. That’s the projection of where our emissions were going to track before we had the Inflation Reduction Act. Before we had the Bipartisan Infrastructure legislation. Before we had that 600 new and expanded facilities, the $200 billion private investment so far.

Here's where we need to go. So, if that's where we were on track to be before this administration, the blue shows where we need to be on a net zero trajectory to 2050.

And just with the President's leadership, just with this level of investment, with the IRA and the BIL, the green is the trajectory we're now on.

So, when people say policy doesn't matter, when people say leadership doesn't matter, I'm here to say: it absolutely matters.

There's no way you get from that red to that green without leadership, without policy.

And there's no way we get to the blue without continued leadership and continued policy, just leaning in day after day.

I've never been more optimistic about our chances—not only to have huge economic opportunities in our country, but a global race for clean energy around the world, with opportunities around the world.

We want to– I think we are making, we have, an irresistible domestic market here in the U.S. for clean energy investment. We are eager to lean in even further on that front.

I want to thank you all, for those who are already partnering us with us, whether on your tax incentives, whether on the grants, whether on the loans.

And for those who aren't yet, our team is happy, willing and eager to talk further and see if there's a good fit, so that we can do our part to keep this momentum.

We've got a phenomenal amount of momentum right now. That green represents an awful lot of work to get to that momentum.

Let's keep it going.