Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
12/11/2015
PARIS – Without clean energy innovation, countries will be unlikely to increase their ambition in future climate mitigation efforts, U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz said Monday. Moniz, speaking to reporters at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), highlighted the efforts of 20 countries that have formed the “Mission Innovation” initiative.
“I want to emphasize that we at least … view [innovation] as very important to the COP because it will be the cost reduction of clean energy technology that will emerge from this innovation focus that will over time reinforce the need for increasing ambition in terms of what countries commit to and can achieve,” Moniz said.
In the buildup to COP21, nearly all of the almost 200 nations involved in the UNFCCC submitted intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs), which will make up the bulk of the event’s planned climate change agreement. UNFCCC analysis of the INDCs has concluded they will not deliver on the international goal of limiting global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius. For this reason, the final agreement will very likely include a review mechanism in which countries would come back to the table every few years and re-examine their contributions, increasing their ambition if possible. The possibility that any given country might decide that it can increase its efforts in years to come may be encouraged by the emergence of new clean energy solutions or a decrease in the cost of existing technologies, Moniz suggested.
President Barack Obama and leaders from 19 other countries announced Mission Innovation here last week as negotiators attempt to finalize a new global climate agreement. The public-private partnership consists of the governments of Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States working in coordination with a private sector group led by Bill Gates.
The private sector arm of the initiative has been titled the “Breakthrough Energy Coalition.” Notable participants include Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Richard Branson of Virgin Group, Tom Steyer of NextGen Climate, Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard, and Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan of Facebook and the Primary School, respectively
For their part, the governments involved have agreed to double their clean energy research and development funding. “For the 20 countries combined, we talking about the order of $10 billion being doubled in annual R&D spending,” Moniz said.
The Breakthrough Energy Coalition has committed to increasing investment in clean energy start-ups and breakthrough technologies. “Namely, [they will make] investments that are patient, that is they are not expecting a return in a very short time and very risk tolerant, in other words, they will make risky investments in promising technologies that are high risk but have to potential for an enormous payoff over a 10- or 20-year time period,” the energy chief said.
Moniz added that the Mission Innovation initiative holds the potential to further diversify the global clean energy portfolio as each country is likely to take a unique path forward. “Each of those countries will, in turn, develop its own clean energy portfolio and so in there you will again see this diversity in terms of what different countries emphasize,” he said.
