SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Well, good afternoon, everyone.  I hope you appreciate the backdrop today.  This is a remarkable facility, and I was greatly appreciative of getting not only a tour, but an explanation of what’s happening here.  And I think what’s happening here is an illustration of Chile’s remarkable leadership on renewable energy.  We see that in the grid that is behind me, with about 45 percent or so of Chile’s energy needs already being produced by renewables.

But I think as we’ve heard from the leadership of this enterprise, tremendous possibilities, opportunities, and plans for that number to go up even higher.  And Chile has a commitment to carbon neutrality by 2050, but they’re looking at ways of advancing their climate commitments and doing it as a leader in renewables.

The other thing that’s very gratifying is to know that much of this is also the result of collaboration – collaboration between our governments, but especially collaboration with the private sector.  We have American companies that are working very actively in Chile investing in renewables, helping share technology, and that’s having a profound impact.  I think it shows not only what we’re doing today, but the tremendous potential of this partnership to do even more, and to do it in a way that answers the needs of our respective societies – providing energy that we need to fuel our economies and run our homes – but to do it in a way that also helps us deal with the challenge climate change.

And so, we have the virtue of green energy technology that will provide energy, produce jobs, and allow us to meet our responsibilities to prevent climate change from going any further.  So, you’re seeing that really come to life in the partnership between the United States and Chile, and this is a wonderful illustration.

I think as we discussed also earlier today, there are many areas of the climate and energy economy where there’s tremendous potential for the United States and Chile to do even more together.  We’ve talked about building more resilient supply chains in our hemisphere, including with Chile; and particularly for clean energy and things like lithium, which Chile has in abundance, which are critical to batteries and electric vehicles which are very much the future, already the present in so many ways.

So, this is just a very good illustration for me of not only what we’re doing today, but where we can go from here, and it just speaks to the importance of the partnership between our countries and all that we can do to actually address the needs of our societies now and in the years ahead.  Thank you.