United nations and the world bank and we hope to track to expand the generation transmission and distribution all key sectors. As an active participant in the team focused on the policy framework to improve the enabling environment and reduce the risk for investors through the consistent diplomatic engagement through the embassys and with the embassies in washington, the state department is working to ensure that the transactions that have the emphasis needs to structural policies and governance changes that will encourage even more investment. We have positioned a senior Career Foreign Service officer in the region who is working with our embassies to enhance and focus our diplomatic efforts while minimizing the cost. We are also Planning Regional training sessions sessions the world created the Energy Knowledge and skills of our economic officers in the embassies and in the region. We are very excited about the beyond the grid and and initiative that of the sub initiatives have as pa
Out of. If you could perhaps speak to that issue, protecting and hardening it to our terrorisms. Thank you for the question, chairman smith. I will defer to my colleagues specifically in relation to power africa and those engagements. I can tell you the recognition that we encounter from Energy Companies and energy agencies, ministries in our International Engagements to an everincreasing degree recognize the importance of protecting infrastructure. One of the things the department of energy does is to enter into cooperative engagements with Key International partners. We do this at their expense, at the expense of the host country to help them identify older abilities, vulnerabilities. Plan their systems so there is resilience to in the threats, at all hazards approach whether one is talking about severe weather, cyber attack or physical attack. We have found that this is an area where the United States is in a position to add tremendous amount of value from our experience. I will hav
Areas that we are going to touch upon today that we think you should be aware of. You dont have to be somebody who sits behind your computer all day. Being an on line activists are helping on any of these fronts but i think you should at least be aware whether you are a donor and activist a supporter and elected official or candidate if you work at a nonprofit. You should know that the impact of these tools have an importance that they hold when you think about strategies or you think about ways not just freeze up to get involved but for those organizations and other efforts that you are aligned with. So i want to talk about politics and advocacy aint quickly about campaigns and elections and the shifting tide of media and journalism as well. The biggest thing i get when i talk to people about this topic is okay so you are on twitter him on facebook and have a blog you are preaching to the choir. I hear about things like obamas big date and thats what makes a difference. I want to give
Like you were at some of these meetings where some of these things were discussed no, the nsa was there, i just got the tapes. Im sorry. So we dont have a public listing, per se, but in the first phase of power africa, we did very carefully, through a rigorous interagency process, discuss which would be the six focus countries. And the factors that you describe are, indeed, many of the things that we looked at, to try to assess who would be the good partners. And we will go through a similar process as we think about the expansion. One of the ones that i theres plenty to say about all of them, but one of the ones that ill just spend a moment on is the host countrys commitment. Because as some of the other testimony alluded to, if youre trying to have viable electric utilities, if youre trying to solve some of the problems that are private sector, investors have encountered, in trying to do viable deals, youve got to have a commitment to do things differently. So that was a very one of
Going in a helicopter over this with the epa administrator right after it happened. Stunning. Now. The company has come in and, you know cleaned up most of what was there. We still cant fish. People along the river cant use their property their back yards. This is going to take tens of years to clean up. You can go to the other side of the state where we have in detroit mounds of whats called Petroleum Coke from tar sands that was sitting on the detroit river, now not only blowing into the river, blowing into the school neighborhoods, churches of the southwest side of detroit. Now, thanks to my colleague senator peters whos now with us and i was proud to join with him, that pet cokes not sitting there anymore, but it was pet coke from tar sands that blew into huge airreas of detroit. And now we have madam chair, a real concern in the straits of mackinaw going across our beautiful state from the upper to lower peninsula where we have a very old pipeline. And, again concerns about the fa