Announcing: "Mission Innovation" for clean Energy

Appreciate the seriousness i n this initiative to reduce Carbon Emissions...The entire world has to collaborate for elimination of fossil fuel...Solar and Wind will be the saviors of mankind

Announcing: "Mission Innovation"


November 29, 2015 at 7:01 PM ET by Paul Bodnar, Dave Turk



Summary:
President Obama joins world leaders in announcing “Mission Innovation” to dramatically accelerate global clean energy innovation to address climate change.


Today in Paris, President Obama and French President Hollande, along with a wide range of other top global leaders, will announce “Mission Innovation,” an initiative to dramatically accelerate public and private global clean energy innovation to address global climate change, provide affordable clean energy to consumers, including in the developing world, and create additional commercial opportunities in clean energy.
Through the initiative, 20 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. They stretch across five continents. And when you add all partner countries together, they represent 75 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions from electricity, and more than 80 percent of the world’s clean energy R&D investment.
They also represent the myriad ways we create and use energy. 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.
We know that large scale penetration of clean energy technologies will require that smart investment by governments is followed by smart private-sector investments. That is why 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.
Members of these initiatives recognize 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.
Mission Innovation responds to the urgency of climate change, the opportunity of technological innovation, and the international imperative to tackle this problem in a global way. And we're stepping up our game through the initiatives announced today.
Today’s announcements build on a sustained commitment from the President to unlock clean energy R&D funding and call on the private sector to do its part. Day-in and day-out, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), under the leadership of Secretary Ernest Moniz, is centrally focused on clean energy innovation. In October, Secretary of State John Kerry brought investors together at a Climate and Clean Energy Investment Forum to develop better pathways to sustainable development in new and emerging markets, including finding new ways to accelerate collaboration across borders and sectors. Earlier this summer, Vice President Biden announced $4 billion in independent commitments by major foundations, institutional investors, and others to fund innovative solutions to help fight climate change, including technologies with breakthrough potential to reduce carbon pollution. The Administration has also taken a series of executive actions that will further encourage private-sector investment in clean energy innovation, including:

• Launching a new Clean Energy Investment Center at the DOE to make information about energy and climate programs at the Department and other government agencies accessible and more understandable to the public, including to mission-driven investors;
• Facilitating investments by charitable foundations, in clean energy technologies and other potentially mission-aligned sectors, through new Treasury Department guidance on impact investing;
• Improving financing options from the U.S. Small Business Administration for private investment funds seeking long-term capital, including early-stage investors in capital-intensive clean energy technologies; and
• Clarifying when pension funds may choose economically targeted investments, with new guidance from the Department of Labor regarding consideration of environmental, social, and governance factors for retirement plan investing.

We have already made incredible strides in driving down the costs of key clean energy options. The cost of LED lights has dropped 90 percent since 2008, large-scale solar by 60 percent, and wind and battery prices declined by over 40 percent. And with decreasing costs has come greater deployment. Since 2008, we’ve gone from 400,000 LED lightbulbs to more than 78 million installed, wind energy production has tripled, and solar has increased more than twenty-fold.
But we know we must continue to do more. Accelerating clean energy innovation is essential to achieving the goal of limiting the rise in global temperatures to below 2˚C and building 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 will make a real difference in meeting this challenge.
Paul Bodnar is the National Security Council's Senior Director for Energy and Climate Change, National Security Council. Dave Turk is Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Climate and Technology at the U.S. Department of Energy.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/11/29/announcing-mission-innovation

[h=1]Naturalist David Attenborough says Sun can save Earth[/h]

November 30, 2015 23:21

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Filmmaker David Attenborough, whose soothing voice narrated the vicarious journey of millions of TV viewers through the wonders of thenatural world, called at a climate summit today for scientific
investment in "saving the world".


Governments with science research budgets should be spending their cash on finding new ways to gather, store and distribute energy from sources like the Sun, wind and waves, he said on the sidelines of a UN conference tasked with clinching a climate rescue pact.

"The essence of the thing is that it should be cheap," the acclaimed documentary-maker told AFP.


"Goodness me... if we could catch one five-thousandth part of the energy that the Sun sprays onto the Moon, onto this globe every day, we would supply all the energy requirements of humanity.

"So how inefficient are we that we can't get that much?"


Attenborough is one of the public faces of an initiative dubbed the Global Apollo Programme, which seeks to make renewable energy cheaper than coal within 10 years.


Supporters of the scheme include Lord Nicholas Stern -- author of a landmark 2006 report on the economics of climate change -- and Lord Martin Rees, a leading astronomy and former head of the Royal Society, Britain's prestigious academy of science.



http://news.rediff.com/commentary/2...n-save-earth/63ff495711389037f78f45cd4ebcd70d

[h=1]PM Modi speaks at UN Climate Change Conference[/h]November 30, 2015 23:51

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"Over the next few days we will decide the fate of this planet," PM Modi said.

"We need a genuine global partnership. Democratic India must grow rapidly to meet energy needs of everyone," he added.


"We hope advanced nations will assume ambitious targets and pursue them sincerely. Developed countries must fulfil responsibilities to make clean energy available to everyone over the world. They must do this in credible and transparent manner," he said echoing an earlier speech he made directed at the developed nations.


"India is guided by our ancient belief that people & planet are inseparable; that human well being and Nature are indivisible," the PM said.


"By 2030 we will reduce emissions by 35% of 2005 levels, & 40% of our installed capacity will be from non fossil fuels," the PM promised.


"Will achieve it by expanding renewable energy, for eg. by adding 175 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2022," he added.


"We are reducing dependence on fossil fuels through levies & reduction in subsidies, switching sources where possible," he stated.


"We look to the developed countries to mobilize 100 billion US Dollars annually by 2020 for mitigation and adaptation. We will succeed if we have the wisdom to craft a collective partnership that balances responsibilities & capabilities," the PM said.

http://news.rediff.com/commentary/2...e-conference/8db65023a6f174edfa690c346919fb5e