Good Morning. Thank you, Dr. Michalske, for the kind introduction and for your hospitality.

I also want to recognize the past directors of the CRF: Dan Hartley, the founding director, and Peter Matern and Bill McLean. Your leadership over the years has created and sustained a critical asset for the Department of Energy and this nation.

Also, a special thanks to Andy McIlroy for helping arrange my visit and for hosting me on my earlier visit to CRF.

In addition, I would like to say a special word about your senior manager for Combustion and Industrial Technology, Don Hardesty, who has been with the CRF since its founding. He’s a “ CRF Original!” Don has made outstanding contributions over the years in connecting our basic research programs to technological innovations and applications. Therein lies one of the major reasons for the great success of the CRF.

Let me begin by congratulating the Combustion Research Facility on its 25th anniversary. I am sorry I will not be able to be here for your upcoming celebration on November 17th , but I am glad to be here now and to have the chance to be acknowledge your fine work. And I do appreciate all of you taking the time to join me this afternoon.

The CRF is one of the best examples I know of how an investment in science can pay off. This investment has improved energy technology and boosted efficiencies, at the same time it has advanced basic scientific research.

Some 650 scientific publications have featured CRF: This demonstrates your dedication to research and has become a testament to your hard work and productivity.

Over the years, the CRF and its users, over 400 of whom have come from outside the U.S., have greatly expanded the fundamental knowledge of combustion processes and contributed to significant design innovations for diesel engines, pulse combustors for furnaces, and pollution reduction methods.

As you know better than I, all current engine designs benefit from CRF research; the Chemkin code is used by all automobile and engine manufacturers to design energy efficient and low emission engines. This is just one example how the achievements of this facility are both far-reaching and serve to help alleviate this nation and the world’s energy challenges.

Just a brief look at the energy situation we now face illustrates the importance the work you do here at the CRF.

The world’s energy appetite will at least double by the end of this century. For the most constrained CO2 concentration scenarios, the amount of carbon-free energy required at the end of the century will more or less equal the earth’s total energy consumption at the beginning of this century.

And looking at the near term, the energy picture is equally troubling.

In the next 20 years, we expect overall U.S. energy consumption to increase by over 30 percent.

We expect oil demand to increase by one third.

We expect U.S. consumption of natural gas to increase by 62 percent.

And we expect electricity demand to increase a full 45 percent.

The world therefore must address two key questions: where will this new energy come from, and how can it be net carbon-free?

There are other consequences of an energy hungry world. The hunger is of a different origin than in the 1970’s. Then it was energy supply; today it is energy demand. We are already seeing the precursors of energy conflict. Consternation in the U.S. greeted a Chinese bid for UNOCAL. Japan has challenged China in gas exploration efforts in the East China sea. India and China, as their economies mature and expand, are already competing for energy sources for their billion people populations.

In the face of these trends, among the most important of foreseeable responses is increase conservation, largely through increased efficiency. The United States is a prime example. Electricity production uses about 40% of primary energy, and of this amount, about 70% is waste or rejected energy. Overall, about 60% of United States primary energy is lost in waste or rejected heat. With less than 5% of the world’s population, the United States consumes about 25% of the world’s energy (but produces only about 18%). Even if the United States were to be 100% efficient in the use of energy, this would amount to but 15% of world energy consumption, not negligible, but far less than the doubling to tripling of the world’s energy generation required by the end of this century. Nevertheless, when amplified globally, more efficient use of energy can play a major role as part of a scenario to avoid energy conflict.

The CRF can play a lead role, or in other words, what each of you do here will have a broad and profound impact on our ability to meet what is arguable the central challenge of the 21st century – meeting the energy demands of a growing world.

Your recent successes are clear examples of the contributions we have cometo expect from the CRF.

Jackie Chen, for example, was honored with an award through the INCITE program for grand challenge research in Direct Numerical Simulation of Combustion. This award gave her 5% of the NERSC supercomputing resource to perform the world’s largest numerical combustion simulation. The simulation models a turbulent jet flame and will reveal the mechanisms of extinction and reignition in turbulent flames.

Another important accomplishment is the discovery of the combustion intermediates enols by the CRF/ALS Flame Chemistry Team featured on the cover of the June 24, 2005 Science magazine. This discovery also received the Shirley Award at the ALS Users meeting for the outstanding scientific achievement at the Advanced Light Source in 2005, "for the surprising and far-reaching discovery of enols in flames."

These achievements set you apart; they are the results of past hard work and the foundation for future scientific success. And we are going to need those successes if we are to meet the energy challenges I just outlined.

With energy as an emerging point of focus worldwide, last August President Bush signed into law the first national energy plan in more than a decade. This bill promotes investments in energy conservation and efficiency and raises the visibility and accountability of science as a key part of energy solutions.

This important piece of legislation is forward-looking and aims to keep an emphasis on science. In terms of the future, understanding and predicting complex systems is an important challenge in science and will require the combination of state-of-the-art diagnostics and modeling that is a hallmark of the CRF.

Combustion chemistry is a prototype for complex systems, and researchers at the CRF are pioneering the application of measurement and simulation in addressing complex systems. Researchers are also currently developing handheld chemical analysis systems for the detection of chemical warfare agents, protein biotoxins, and other chemical and biological compounds with defense, environmental and medical applications.

In addition, the CRF is preparing for the future by involving younger generations in the sciences through its internship program. The CRF’s Physical Sciences Institute has graduate and undergraduate interns delve into physical-science problems with Sandia mentors.

Past interns have written Java visualization software that allows the CRF to share low-pressure flame data with collaborators through the internet and have developed new software for the analysis of diesel spray combustion. This internship program is one of the many steps that ensure the CRF a continued bright future.

The Combustion Research Facility has played a vital role in advancing our knowledge. The CRF was born as a result of our nation’s first “energy crisis” and was established at a time when engineers and scientists knew little detailed information about the combustion process and did not have the kinds of tools we have today.

The CRF was founded with the mission to obtain better knowledge of combustion processes and the hope this would lead to a more efficient and cleaner conversion of fuels to energy. As a result, CRF scientists pioneered the use of laser-based optical diagnostics, now essential for the study of combustion.

The CRF exemplifies the concept of a scientific user facility by providing specialized tools and scientific leadership. But as you well know, before science comes safety. Your dedication to the importance of safety everywhere on site has been a key to your success. It is essential that managers take responsibility for ensuring the safety of our employees and of the communities surrounding our facilities.

This, as I’m sure you know, is a primary concern of Secretary Bodman. This is what he told us at the DOE headquarters when he took office: “. . .When it comes to our collective safety, we must never lapse into complacency. Complacency is sometimes built into the standard way of doing things. Complacency is safety’s enemy.”

Just as Secretary Bodman takes every person’s safety as a personal responsibility, so do I. I commend each and every CRF employee for making safety and security a number one priority.

With the importance of safety never overlooked, the CRF has a 25-year history of achievements, awards and honors that characterize the quality of the employees and their product.

The Office of Science looks forward to continuing to work with the CRF in expanding the scientific basis for addressing the energy challenges of today and the future. Once again I would like to congratulate everyone who is a part of the CRF on a job well done. We are very grateful in the Office of Science to have the quality and the achievement that this facility presents.

Congratulations to the CRF on 25 years of success, and here’s to many more years to come.