Thank you for that warm introduction, and it’s great to be back in Roanoke.

You may have heard, I’ve been on the road a lot these past several months -- 71 trips to 32 states and five foreign countries. I’ve eaten corn dogs in Iowa, organic yogurt in New Hampshire, barbeque in South Carolina, and pastrami in New York. Let me start by saying it’s great to be back home.

Since I made the decision not to run for President, so many Virginians have come up to me to tell me that they were upset that I didn’t do it, but they understood.

Up in Washington D.C., it was an entirely different story. See, no one decides not to continue a political campaign unless they’re losing or there’s a scandal. Well, I thought I’d win. So there was wild speculation: no, I never killed anyone; no, I didn’t have a sex change; and no, I absolutely never have appeared with Borat.

What happened is that I took a moment and looked at where I was in my life, and asked myself: is this the right thing at this time for me and my family?

The weekend before I made the decision, I went to visit my dad who’s 81 years-old. He’s taking care of my mom who’s got Alzheimer’s. The whole family was there. And it got me thinking. That same weekend, I took my oldest daughter to start looking at colleges. How many of you have done that? And it really drove home to me that this was a unique time for me and my family – a time that I could never get back.

I decided that this was not the right time for me politically to take this plunge…it was not the right time for me or my family. But this is only a decision for this moment in time. I hope I still have more public service -- and even more campaigns -- in me.

Because what motivated me to be in politics, to run for Governor six years ago…what kept me going during all those trips this past year has not gone away. It’s the belief that what makes America the most unique nation in the world -- is that here more than anywhere else, every single person…no matter the color of their skin, where you were born, or who your parents were…can get a fair shot.

I got that shot. I went to good public schools -- and to become the only member of my family to graduate from college, thanks to student loans. I failed at almost every business I tried – but I kept getting another shot. And that’s the genius of America.

As I traveled the country these past months…wherever I was, I kept hearing from folks that they were scared that this fair shot was disappearing.

They were working longer hours, but were barely keeping up with the cost of gas, college tuition, and saving for retirement.

They want to add new employees to their businesses, but the high-cost of health care ate into their bottom line…and who could compete with countries where they pay their workers a few dollars a day without any benefits?

They were proud of their kids in uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan, but couldn’t understand why after the military did its job, there was no plan on how to get them home.

And they worried about a world in which planes and trains were terrorist targets – and everywhere you went there was another metal detector or someone asking for a photo ID.

The American people, like Virginians, aren’t easily fooled. They see the huge challenges that we face – at home and overseas – and they want real, commonsense solutions. They’re sick and tired of the politics of polarization; of the politics of divide and conquer.

I think this past election sent a clear signal to both parties in Washington: the American people are sick of partisan finger-pointing. They’re done with the old orthodoxies and the slash-and-burn politics. They want practical solutions. They want people – from both parties – working together, putting party aside for the good of the country.

What they want, I think, is what we’ve done here in Virginia. Sure, our campaigns are tough – how many people here were ready to scream if they saw one more political ad on TV?

But, when it comes time to govern…to look out for the common good of the Commonwealth…we come together and get things done.

That’s what we tried to do when I was Governor to get our fiscal house in order…to improve our schools…and to create jobs in Southside and southwest Virginia and we did it with these legislators here tonight from both parties.

I hope and pray that the leaders in Washington got the message. The stakes are too high for us to lapse back into gridlock. The challenges – and opportunities -- are too great for America to stay on the sidelines.

You know, I’m 51 years-old, and I can’t think of a time in my life when our country faces so many enormous problems at the same time.

And even though I may not be running for President, I’m still 100 percent committed to trying to help fix our country…to getting it back on track so that every kid in America can get their fair shot.

There’s a lot that needs to be done. And if you give me all night, I’d cover every single one of them.

Don’t worry – I won’t.

But tonight I do want to say a few words about one of the biggest challenges we face…one that is at once an economic, environmental, security, and moral issue…and which may be the defining issue of the next 25 years – and that’s the issue of energy.

I believe that we have it in our power right now to fundamentally change how we power our country and our economy. And if we take steps now to wean us off of fossil fuels – and especially foreign oil – we can have a country that is more prosperous and more secure. More than that, I believe that our Commonwealth can lead the way.

Right now, the United States consumes just under 21 million barrels of oil a day – which is about one-quarter of the world’s total consumption. It’s a lot of oil. But by 2020, just 13 years from now, we’ll need a lot more. Oil consumption just in the transportation sector of our economy is expected to jump 20 percent – and electricity demand 22 percent.

Yet, we only have 2.4 percent of the world’s proven petroleum reserves.

Where do we get the rest?

Well, right now, each year we send about $250 billion of your money to places like Saudi Arabia where fundamentalist clerics preach hate against the United States…to Venezuela where Hugo Chavez uses his oil windfall to back anti-American leaders in Latin America…and to Russia where Vladimir Putin is hardly our closest friend.

You know, we may be the first country in history to be backing both sides in a war – we are fighting the war on terror abroad while at home we send our dollars to regimes that funnel it to the very terrorists we are fighting! It’s insane.

Meanwhile, remember last summer when the price of gas went over three dollars a gallon?

And remember how tough it was on our economy in the 1970’s when the foreign oil spigots were turned off? With our energy sources in someone else’s hands, our economic future is out of our hands.

At the same time, as we are burning oil, gas, coal, and other fossil fuels, we are spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and fundamentally altering our climate. The number of hurricanes, floods, and wildfires has jumped exponentially since we were kids. Climate change stands to profoundly alter life as we know it. We have a moral obligation to stop global warming.

My friends, we have to connect the dots between energy policy, global warming, national security, and job creation. Our dependence on oil is not just an issue for the environmentalists. If you care about good jobs here at home and protecting us from enemies abroad, it’s an issue for you too.

As I just mentioned, an America that is free of Middle East oil will have the freedom to protect its interests in that region and all over the world. And it will dry up the well of money that is funding some of our worst enemies.

There’s also a big economic case to be made for making more of our energy here at home.

Imagine for a moment that gallon of gasoline that you pumped into your car this morning. Think about the jobs it creates. It started on a rig somewhere thousands of miles from here. That rig was built by a construction company. On the rig are dozens of workers. Manning the pipeline are dozens more. Then, there’s the crew that pumps it into the tankers – and the crew on the tankers itself. Finally, it makes its way to America. A few longshoremen pump the gas into tanker trucks. A truck driver drives it to your local gas station. You fill up.

The way I see it, that’s a whole lot of jobs that are stuck overseas – and just a few that are actually in the US.

As many of you know, in the late 1980’s, I did pretty well in getting ahead of the telecom and IT boom. And let me tell you: I see that same potential now with energy; we can have a similar boom in that field – for the US and for Virginia. Of course, there is no silver bullet. We need to look at all the options – wind, solar, biofuels, clean coal, nuclear, and probably a few others that no one’s thought of yet.

But for a minute, just think about biofuels, like ethanol and biodiesel – fuels made from corn, switch grass, and other agricultural products – and what they could do for our economy.

That corn and switch grass is going to be grown right here in the United States by farms of all sizes. After harvest, it’ll be sold to a wholesaler and transported to a biofuel plant. In that plant will be American workers from those rural areas. Then, the fuel makes the journey from that plant to your gas station. Every step of the way, the workers working to get that energy from the ground to your tank are American. Sounds like a good investment to me.

Now, many experts say that we can – with the right policies – replace 25 percent of our gas and diesel consumption with biofuels by 2020. If we do that, the estimates are that we’d increase farm income by almost $2 billion a year…reduce government farm subsidies and create about a million to a million and a half new jobs.

And, by the way, done right, we’d reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 22 percent. Not a bad deal.

Right now, the alternative energy sector is poised to take off. Last year, the global market for renewable energy was about $40 billion. In 5 years, it should be over $150 billion.

And just as Virginia led the IT revolution and used that to create thousands of jobs, I believe that we are well-positioned to lead the clean energy revolution.

First, we have unique reserves of natural resources.

For example, roughly 250 square miles along Virginia’s coastal areas are ripe for wind power – and if used correctly could generate around 700 megawatts of power. That can power more than 175,000 homes.

We have deep reserves of coal, and no matter which way you cut it, we will still use a lot of coal to generate power in the United States over the next 30 years. And coal production is good for Virginia in general and good for southwest Virginia in particular. 30 million tons of coal is mined in Virginia every year. The challenge is to find a way to use it in a way that so that we have zero – or near zero – emissions that harm the atmosphere.

Also, Virginia has a huge timber and wood products industry. All that sawdust and wood waste can be burned as biomass energy for the production of heat and electricity. Or that wood and wood-waste can be turned into ethanol. More than that, we can plant energy crops – like hybrid poplars, switch grass, and hull-less barley – specifically for energy use.

So, in Southside, Virginia – where we’ve seen the loss of tobacco crops -- we can plant these energy crops, grow our fuel, and grow jobs right here in Southside Virginia.

And we can do this all because we have another advantage over many other states – we have great human capital. Already, Virginia companies are developing the ideas and the technologies that will lead these new industries.

Here in Salem, GE makes critical parts of some of the biggest wind turbines in the country. In Hurt, Virginia – near Danville – is the largest wood-fired power plant in the United States. And in Lynchburg, Areva is the largest service and maintenance company for nuclear generation plants in the US.

Also, consider that the big leap forward that needs to happen in the coal industry is to find a way to sequester the carbon emissions from coal-powered power plants…so it doesn’t go out into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases. It’s the holy grail of clean coal technology – and Virginia Tech is one of the premiere university research centers in this field.

What’s more Virginia Tech is taking the lead on biofuel research too. Tech researchers are exploring the best way to grow and use switch grass for alternative energy sources and researching new and better ways to turn corn and cellulose into ethanol.

Finally, the future of alternative energy – like all industries – depends on information technology. There is a growing convergence between the IT industry and the energy industry as better information technology allows for better and more efficient use of the energy we already have. And we all know we have a whole lot of IT expertise in Virginia.

Just the other day, I met a young man who a few years ago was programming code for the CIA in Langley. Now, he has developed a device that coordinates a building owner’s energy use with the price of electricity at any given time of day.

It reduces energy use when rates are highest…it allows you to sell energy to your utility that you may generate with, say, a solar panel…and it can store energy in batteries to be used in case of a blackout – or be drawn upon by the utility at peak demand.

Devices like this that improve our energy efficiency have huge potential to reduce our nation’s energy use. And by doing so, they put dollars in the pockets of U.S. consumers, and they make U.S. companies more competitive.

I believe that here in Virginia, we can revolutionize energy production for the rest of the world.

We can do it. But our state can’t do it alone.

So far, I don’t think anyone in the political world has built the whole case that getting our energy use right is really more than an environmental issue, but an incredibly important job creation issue and national security issue. That needs to be done first. Then, we need to set strong national goals for government, business, and individual action. The framework of these goals should be:

1) The implementation of a countrywide carbon cap and trade system that uses the power of the market to reward companies who do a good job limiting greenhouse gas emissions and penalize those who do not. They’re doing it in Europe. California just passed it into law. It’s time the entire country gets on board.

2) To make sure that we have a domestic auto industry in five or 10 years, we need to have higher auto emission standards. We have lagged so far behind that even China has higher emissions standards than we do.

3) It’s time for a dramatic increase in our investment in energy-related R&D. Right now, the federal government spends a little less than $2 billion a year on energy R&D – and almost $8 billion a month in Iraq. Something’s out of whack.

4) We need to set a national goal that we will help create millions of new American jobs around the green energy space. I think Virginia can take a lead in this effort.

5) Each and every one of us – businesses and households – needs to set a goal of cutting our reliance on foreign oil by, say, 20 percent over the next 15 years. The way I see it, it’s a way for Americans to send a message to terrorists that we are more than willing to do our part to win this war.

And across the country, Democrats and Republicans – people – are ready for leadership on this issue.

You know, looking back on the past year…at the journey that I took, I have no regrets. It was an honor to have the chance to travel the nation…and to meet people from all walks of life.

And everywhere I went, people asked me how we were able to get things done in Virginia – with a Democratic Governor and Republican legislature, with a diverse state. They knew what we did to improve education, bring new jobs to Southside and southwest Virginia…they heard about the awards we won, including best managed state in the country.

I am extraordinarily proud of what we were able to do. And so much of what we did was because of friends in this room – and leaders in the business community who took the long view…and saw that we were all in this together. For that, I thank you.

And, the funny thing is that where ever I was – on a farm in Western Iowa, in a hotel in Las Vegas, or in a factory in Manchester, New Hampshire…whether I was talking to a son of immigrants or a daughter of the American Revolution…Republican, Independent, or Democrat…they too realized something that our leaders often forget: that our divisions are tiny compared to what unites us as Americans.

So, while I return to you aware about the big challenges we face – on energy, economic competitiveness, foreign policy, and our deficit – I also am energized about our country’s ability to confront and overcome these problems.

I am optimistic about the future of our country – and of our Commonwealth. The best days for our country, Commonwealth, and the Roanoke Valley are still ahead of us.

And I am confident that by working together – as Americans – we can leave our children a world that is safer, a nation that is more united, and a country where they too can get their fair shot at their dreams.

Now that’s what I’m going to be working on the next few years and I look forward to working with you.

Thank you, and thanks for having me back to this incredible county.