Rice alum receives Swedish knighthood

BY FRANZ BROTZEN
Rice News Staff
 
Andy Karsner ’89 received a knighthood from Sweden’s King Carl Gustav in recognition of his “outstanding and unprecedented expansion of the historic ties between the United States and Sweden” in the fields of energy R&D, science-and-technology collaboration and commercialization, environment, conservation and climate change.

Maud Olofsson, the deputy prime minister of Sweden and the minister of energy and enterprise, and other state officials and dignitaries attended the March 30 ceremony, along with U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Assistant Secretary-Designate David Sandalow.

	Alumnus Andy Karsner was bestowed the ribbon and medallion of knighthood by Maud Olofsson, the deputy prime minister of Sweden, during a ceremony at the residence of the Swedish ambassador to the United States in Washington

Olofsson bestowed the ribbon and medallion on Karsner in front of Karsner’s wife, Maria, and three young daughters at the residence of the Swedish ambassador to the United States in Washington. Karsner delivered parts of his remarks of acceptance and gratitude in Swedish. His wife and daughters are dual nationals and fluent in both languages.

Officially, Karsner received the insignia and designation, royal commander of the Polar Star-first class, which is the highest honor that the kingdom of Sweden can bestow upon foreign nationals. (The last American to receive the decoration was Strobe Talbott, the writer and diplomat who is currently president of the Brookings Institution.) “This is an enormous honor, not just for me, but in recognition of strengthening the relations and historic bonds that have extended across the Atlantic for generations,” Karsner said. “I am very grateful.”
 
Until last September, Karsner served as the U.S. assistant secretary of energy, responsible for efficiency and renewable energy. He was the country’s top efficiency regulator and managed America’s annual $2 billion energy applied science portfolio spread among universities, national labs and industry. In the recent best-seller “Hot, Flat and Crowded”, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tom Friedman wrote that Karsner’s “depth and breadth of energy experience is unsurpassed.”

Notably during his tenure, Karsner was dispatched as a principal climate-change negotiator to establish a new U.N. global framework to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. In this role he helped originate and establish a breakthrough diplomatic architecture in the major economies process and led the U.S. delegation to sign the “Bali Roadmap” and re-engage after a nearly 10-year hiatus. The approach has since been adopted by the present administration and endorsed by China, India, Brazil, the EU and other key players as the path forward.

Sweden, which will begin presiding over the EU in July and will lead the European Union into climate negotiations at this year’s climate conference at Copenhagen, began deepening bilateral energy ties with the U.S. Department of Energy in 2006 in anticipation of its leadership role. Integral to this initiative, the Swedish parliament appropriated matching funds with the Department of Energy for a new trans-Atlantic collaborative that formed the model for what has come to be called IP3, or International Public Private Partnerships.

Karsner called it “a move beyond traditional Cold War silos and national energy research and development programs that unduly confine themselves within country boundaries” and a recognition of how “the world is flat.”

In the new IP3 program, each country gets 3-to-1 leverage on its public funds, as the bilateral contributions must again be matched by privately funded research and development that offers a “sight line” and timetable probability for commercialization.

The program has resulted of millions of new dollars for universities, industries and entrepreneurs in the United States and Sweden. It has funded research in such areas as cellulosic biofuels, diesel truck hybridization, renewable energy storage, district heating and cooling, and industrial efficiency through nanotechnology.

Karsner has been busy since leaving the Energy Department. He joined the boards of Applied Materials; the University of Chicago, as overseer for the Argonne National Laboratory; Conservation International; the X-Prize Foundation; and the Energy Future Coalition. He was also named a distinguished fellow at the Council on Competitiveness and serves alongside former Secretary of State George Shultz on the Hoover Energy Task Force at Stanford University.

At the Aspen Energy Forum in July, Karsner will announce the launch of a new energy development company and fund for clean energy infrastructure, in collaboration with major utilities, engineering groups and private equity. “I am confident that this new platform will further the scaling and market diffusion of advanced energy technology for generation, transportation and efficiency,” he said. “And as an honorary knight of His Majesty King Carl Gustav, I am hopeful we will continue building bridges with our European cousins to address the great energy and environmental challenges of our time.”