Linkin Park visit the White House report and photos
Linkin Park met with State Department energy officials at the White House on Friday to discuss efforts to provide access to modern energy to the more than 1.3 billion people currently without access to electricity.
Departments of State and Energy Meet with Linkin Park on Access to Energy
Ambassador Carlos Pascual, Special Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy Rick Duke met today with the members of the Grammy-winning rock band Linkin Park to discuss efforts to provide access to modern energy to the more than 1.3 billion people currently without access to electricity. Along with representatives of the private sector and non-governmental organizations, participants discussed United States Government programs to expand access to electricity, including commitments made to the UN Secretary-General’s Sustainable Energy for All initiative (SE4All) and Connecting the Americas 2022, which was launched at the Sixth Summit of the Americas.
Linkin Park described their efforts to support energy access for all through their Power the World initiative and the non-profit Music for Relief. The band expressed their commitment to supporting and inspiring efforts at international development, disaster relief, and particularly, energy access.
Other participants in the meeting included staff of the United Nations Foundation, Music for Relief, and private sector leaders. The meeting took place at the Department of State’s Harry S Truman Building.
Please contact John Finn, at finnjw@state.gov or 202-647-7959, or visit the State Department’s Bureau of Energy Resources for further information.
Rapper and co-frontman Mike Shinoda says the band began funding disaster relief efforts worldwide after the devastating 2004 tsunami in Asia. Bassist Dave “Phoenix” Farrell also commented, “We want to see a generation behind us that’s in a better place than we are now and we want to see, for lack of a better way of putting it, a hope for the future and we really think that sustainable energy is not, if the most, one of current issues we need all over the world.”
Shinoda said after meeting with officials from the U.N. that 1.3 billion people around the world currently live without access to sustainable energy. He adds, “You almost can’t fathom that number. It’s such a large percent of the world’s population and that really caught our attention and I feel like with the platform that we’ve got and just the people that are paying attention to the band, we can put that information out there and hopefully in numbers we can make a difference.” Full report from The Examiner
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