Good Evening Dean Shields, it’s great to be here. Vermont Law School is an outstanding institution. Thanks for your leadership.

I would also like to recognize my friend Michael Dworkin, who has contributed so much in the course of his career to Vermont’s energy ethic, and who now directs the Vermont Institute for Energy and the Environment.

I also would like to recognize the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law. Thank you for hosting this symposium. You have convened a group of experts who will talk about issues of great importance to Vermont, to our nation and our world.

I am Lieutenant Governor of the State of Vermont.

But when I am not serving the people of my state, I am a commercial airline captain, for a major US airline.

I have had the privilege to travel all over the world. I remember the first time I flew into the smog of Shanghai, China. While there, one day I picked up the Shanghai daily newspaper. On page one was a photo of an elected official hugging a Chinese astronaut.

They were celebrating China’s entry into the Space Club, joining Russia and the United States. Looking through the paper I noticed an article on page seventeen, about an opinion poll. It had asked the Chinese people, “What is more important to you: for China to have a clean environment, or for China to be a leader in space exploration?”

Seven out of ten Chinese answered that they would rather have a clean environment.

While I was there, I learned the Chinese expression "Same Bed, Different Dreams”. It describes the conflict that arises when people do not share a common dream.

Good leadership is about creating “Same Bed, Same Dream”. Clear vision helps us reconcile our need for energy with our need to protect our environment.

I remember my first time flying into Los Angeles, descending out of perfectly clear skies at 5,000 feet -- into smog-filled skies. The visibility became so bad that I had to rely on my instruments to land. I have seen the same conditions in Mexico City, Salt Lake City and other great cities.

Just last week, I flew over the coal-fired power plants of the upper Midwest. You can watch the smoke trails drifting northeast along the St. Lawrence River Valley.

I know as pilot that weather circles the earth from west to east -- from the smog of a developing Shanghai, to the inversions over Los Angeles and Salt Lake, to the fossil-fuel power plants of the US Midwest, to Vermont and Quebec.

It seems we are all in the same global bed.

How do we go about creating Same Dreams?

A unifying vision that I have shared with Vermont – a shared dream for the environment, for economic development, for farmers and for educational institutions like Vermont Law School, is the idea called the Green Valley. As one of Vermont’s economic development clusters, it is an initiative to develop what we call the Green Valley, a “Silicon Valley” for environmental technology.

Clean Earth Technology in North Ferrisburg and Concepts NREC in Wilder, Vermont are shining examples of the concept. They export products from right here in Vermont that clean up environmental pollution all over the world.

We are working to form partnerships between private industry, government, and institutions of higher learning to develop more technologies like theirs.

I have learned to test my efforts as Lt. Governor by asking three questions. You may be familiar with the triple-bottom-line concept. It also applies to our decisions about energy. These three questions form the test:

Is it good for the environment?

Is it good for society?

And is it good for business?

If the answer to each question is yes, then we have a project that’s sustainable.

As a result of some good decisions made in the past, Vermont is a leader in clean energy. The state’s current portfolio has one of the lowest associated emissions levels and highest percentage of renewable fuels of any in the nation. Vermont’s aggregate emissions per megawatt-hour of generation are nearly two orders of magnitude lower than the U.S. average.

Our state’s contribution to total U.S. air polluting emissions is less than two one-hundredths of one percent.

And our long-term, stable power portfolio has insulated us from the excessive rate increases suffered by other Northeast states, due to commodity price volatility.

Thanks to our Hydro Quebec contract, our in-state hydro, and Burlington’s McNeil generating plant, Vermont has a high percentage of renewable supply. And our utilities are also working to improve on it. Central Vermont Public Service is pioneering “Cow Power,” a program to help farmers install bio digesters that turn cow manure into methane that’s used to generate electricity. This has a secondary environmental benefit of reducing the pollution of nearby waterways from farm runoff.

The Washington Electric Co-operative has built an electric generating facility at Vermont’s largest landfill in Coventry, where they produce methane from trash –generating approximately 4 megawatts of power a month.

Thanks to Efficiency Vermont, our first-in-the-nation statewide efficiency utility, Vermont is already a leader in fostering efficient use of energy – and that helps reduce our need for new energy resources. The opportunity to stimulate efficiency continues to grow, and the manner in which we can invest efficiency dollars should be a focus in the near term.

As Chair of the Governor’s Homeland Security Advisory Council, I know that the more we distribute the generation the more robust and the more secure our energy grid becomes. Grid stability can also be enhanced by targeting efficiency dollars in congested areas of the grid that could also offer the greatest return on investment.

There are a number of Vermont companies on the cutting edge of renewable energy technology.

Northern Power Systems of Waitsfield designs, builds, installs, and services electric power systems for industrial, commercial, government, and military customers, deploying alternative energy sources such as wind, solar, and combined heat and power systems.

NRG Systems in Hinesburg is a leader in innovative products for wind assessment systems and other equipment crucial for wind energy projects.

General Dynamics is doing research and development on hydrogen fuel cells at its Burlington Technology Center, where it partners with the University of Vermont, Norwich University and Vermont Technical College.

One “Green Valley” partnership effort is the creation of the Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies at the University of Vermont, where research spin-offs and other technology companies get help with technology transfer and licensing support and assistance.

As we consider how to move in the direction of Same Bed Same Dreams, it is crucial to understand that the development of small emerging companies requires an environment conducive to entrepreneurship. That’s why I support the Governor’s Agenda of Affordability, which seeks to make Vermont livable while preserving our natural heritage and quality of life. We must be mindful that Vermont is an expensive place to live.

We must work to keep Vermont’s tax burden on individuals and businesses down. We must focus on making housing more available and affordable for working families. And we must strive to reduce the cost of energy and regulation on our employers. I make it a point to meet regularly with IBM, and to listen to the concerns of our state’s largest employer. The 6,000 plus people who work at IBM compete globally in the very competitive market of semiconductor design and production. Energy costs are critically important to IBM. They underscore how global competition affects our state. As a percent of our GDP, Vermont leads the nation in the importance of exports. Thousands and thousands of our neighbors who work in manufacturing depend on exports for their jobs -- not just for IBMers, but for the workers at Ethan Allen Furniture in Orleans, where they compete against furniture made in China. The diary farmers of Vermont have the same energy concerns that IBM has.

A key to the fostering of these cutting edge businesses is providing the proper technology infrastructure. We are working with private partners to foster construction of broadband and wireless infrastructure throughout Vermont.

The businesses of tomorrow will need a highly educated, highly skilled workforce. We are pursuing a number of initiatives to promote the creation of this workforce, including the Vermont Promise Scholarship program—a 15-year, $175-million scholarship plan to make college more affordable to young people and encourage them to live and work in Vermont after they graduate.

Vermont is working creatively with existing tax credit and incentive programs through our Department of Economic Development to assist entrepreneurs and existing energy technology firms grow their businesses here in Vermont.

These include tax credits through the Vermont Economic Progress Council; assistance through the Department of Economic Development; and a new mezzanine program being administered by the Vermont Economic Development Authority.

The Department of Public Service will allocate over $400,000 to the “Vermont Solar and Small Wind Incentive Program” to support small-scale wind demonstrations. These funds are a portion of the $1.5 million in U.S. Department of Energy funds secured by Senator James Jeffords for the DPS Wind Development Program.

An additional $280,000 of incentive funds for solar electric and solar hot water systems is being provided by Central Vermont Public Service and Green Mountain Power for customers in their service territories, making a total of $800,000 available.

The Department of Public Service is proposing an additional state tax credit for commercial solar installations piggybacked on the federal credit. As prices continue to rise, use of solar energy on commercial structures makes increasing economic sense and can help shave peak demand in the summer.

Energy is on the minds of Vermonters and policymakers in Montpelier. Debate over nuclear power – the up rate, dry cask storage, re-licensing -- renewable portfolio standards -- commercial scale wind generation -- all have generated a lots of discussion.

But no issue has done more to stir discussion than the looming supply gap, as Vermont Yankee’s license is set to expire in 2012, and the HQ contract starts to wind down in 2014. Replacing two-thirds of our energy supply in a relatively short time frame will be a daunting task.

In Montpelier, last year’s Act 61 is one step towards that future. It encourages Vermont utilities to use renewable resources to meet their load growth between 2005 and 2013. This is important. It is also important to note that the resources contemplated in Act 61 will not replace base load resources like HQ and VY.

To determine our future sources, the state has begun a novel planning effort called mediated modeling. It brings together a diverse group of people from the utility, business, renewable energy and environmental sectors who will work to help quantify the various tradeoffs implicit in energy decision-making.

The benefit of mediated modeling is that diverse interests are brought together and presented with the same set of facts and asked to work collaboratively towards a scoring of alternatives.

The result of that process will feed into the next update of the VT State Electric Plan.

It will also be used in an ambitious public outreach process this summer -- joint effort between the Douglas Administration and legislative leadership -- to gauge public thinking on energy options

We hope that the direction provided by the mediated modeling and public outreach process will give good guidance about our shared values to utility planners and regulators.

That’s a path from different dreams to shared dreams.

In the legislature this year, the Vermont House passed three significant bills building on last year's renewable energy bill—all designed to prepare Vermont for a safe, clean, reliable, and affordable energy future

The Energy Security and Reliability Act promotes renewable power generation and more efficient buildings, increases energy efficiency, and engages the public in a dialog about energy sources.

The Appliance Standards Bill joins Vermont with neighboring states in establishing energy efficiency standards for certain appliances.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative directs Vermont to work with other northeastern states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It calls for a 10% reduction in the tons of carbon produced in this region by 2020.

The house is also working on a farm energy bill H602 that encourages energy from our farms and forests: biodiesel, biomass, solar. 15% of our schools currently heat with woodchips. State buildings and hospitals also heat with this renewable, climate-neutral resource. H602 will continue to foster the development of our farms and forest to meet our energy challenges.

For the third of Vermont’s electricity supply that flows across our northern border, I have devoted considerable attention to our relationship with our neighbors in Quebec, dating from my first weeks as Lt. Governor in early 2003.

In today’s world of volatile gas prices and tradable emissions credits, a healthy relationship with Hydro Quebec will have considerable value for our state and its energy users.

Currently Vermont enjoys a largely stable energy portfolio, at costs -- when compared with our neighbors’ -- look better and better every day.

But we have big challenges ahead, and there are no easy solutions. However, I am confident we can find a balanced, triple-bottom-line energy solution for our state.

Like most Vermonters, I wear a couple of different hats. I am also a commercial maple sugar maker. My brother Mark and I own a 280-acre sugar woods in Fairfield, Vermont with 14,000 maple taps. Mark is working in the woods today. This is not a hobby; my brother feeds a family of five from the income from those sugar woods. He sells his syrup all over our county.

We used to use one gallon of oil to make one gallon of syrup. Then, Mark bought a used but more efficient boiler, and after some other modifications, he now uses just one quart of oil to make a gallon of the finest maple syrup in the world.

Just as my brother has made changes to balance energy, environmental and business reailty to improve his family’s way of life, so can our state make to changes to improve our way of life for all Vermonters.

We can and we will work to transform "same bed, different dreams" to "same bed, same dreams".

We all have much to learn and much to share. I thank you for your attention, and for the opportunity to spend time with you this evening. I would like to formally ask for a summary of this symposium to brief the Governor and his team.

Thank you.