The White House has announced
the formation of Mission Innovation,
a joint initiative from 21 countries which aims to dramatically accelerate
public and private global clean energy innovation to address global climate
change. The announcement follows the start of climate talks being held
in Paris this week.
The initiative is also aiming
provide affordable clean energy to consumers, including in the developing
world, and create additional commercial opportunities in clean energy.
Through the initiative, 21 countries are committing to double their respective
clean energy research and development (R&D) investment over five years.
These countries include the top five most populous nations – China, India,
the United States, Indonesia, and Brazil. The initiative represents 75
percent of the world’s CO2 emissions from electricity, and more than 80
percent of the world’s clean energy R&D investment.
The Mission Innovation members include some of the largest oil and gas
producers – the United States, Canada, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates,
Mexico, Norway and Indonesia – as well as many with high penetration of
renewables in their power sectors, such as Canada, Norway, Denmark, Brazil
and Chile.
Mission Innovation is complemented by a separate private sector-led effort
that has pledged to invest extraordinary levels of private capital in clean
energy, focusing on early-stage innovations. This parallel initiative –
spearheaded by Bill Gates – includes a coalition of over 28 significant
private capital investors from 10 countries, and will be called Breakthrough
Energy Coalition.
Announcing the formation of the Initiative, the White House stated:
"Members of these initiatives recognise a crucial reality: we need
to accelerate the development of clean energy solutions to match the urgency
of tackling climate change. We need an all-in, all-sector approach to transform
global energy markets to address this challenge, and new technologies will
play a critical role in this transformation."
"Our climate imperatives, coupled with the world’s need for energy
and electricity, mean that we don’t have the luxury of decades to develop
and deploy new technologies."
The Initiative aims to accelerate clean energy innovation in order to limit
the rise in global temperatures to below 2˚C. Built on the individual
climate policies now put forward by more than 180 countries as part of
the Paris Climate Conference process, the influx of private and public
capital from these two initiatives is expected to make a real difference
in meeting this challenge.
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