Energy Secretary Rick Perry will jet off to Asia this week to participate in high-level clean energy meetings in China and Japan set up under the Obama administration to discuss how to meet the Paris climate change agreement.
Perry’s June 1-9 trip comes the same week President Trump is expected to make a decision on whether to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.
The Energy Department announced Perry’s trip to China and Japan on Tuesday, saying the trip is meant to “promote American energy interests in Asia and attend the Clean Energy and Mission Innovation Ministerials in Beijing.”
President Trump’s fiscal 2018 budget would cancel funding at the Department of Energy to support Mission Innovation, which was a separate agreement signed by the U.S. and 22 countries last year to meet goals on renewable energy and energy-efficiency development to meet the emission reduction goals under the Paris deal.
The Mission Innovation conference will be the second of its kind and will be held in coordination with the eighth annual Clean Energy Ministerial.
The agency described the meetings in China as “an annual gathering of energy ministers from countries all over the world to advance clean energy.” Perry also will use the meetings to hold bilateral discussions “with Chinese officials and other allies attending the ministerials,” according to the agency.
In Japan, he will meet with officials to discuss “U.S.-Japanese bilateral energy trade relations and opportunities for future energy investments,” the agency said. He will be briefed on the cleanup efforts at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Multiple nuclear reactor meltdowns at the power plant in 2011 caused the evacuation of surrounding towns and spread radiation into the surrounding environment.
He will “observe the progress made in recovering from the 2011 accident and reaffirm the United States’ commitment to supporting the ongoing effort to decontaminate and decommission the Fukushima Daiichi reactors,” the department said.
Perry also plans to visit American airmen at the Yakota Air Force Base.
