Most of these opportunities are medium and long term rather than short term. Breakthroughs such as the Dupont adipic acid process for producing nylon made for spectacular improvements in the 1990s. These things have huge payoffs. The chemical industry is looking at catalysts that I think will be helpful in those areas. Solar energy is something that Dow is looking at. Some of it is more near term. We provide chemicals that go into making insulation and other things that improve ordinary energy efficiency. That's not high-tech, but these incremental improvements could be important and short term. That's happening all the time, and that's where we think we need to put our support.
On December 1st, 2009. See this statement in context.