Nineteen nations will pledge to double their research and development budget for clean energy technology Monday, while a coalition of the world’s richest people will help fund companies to bring that technology to the masses.
The announcement of the partnership, dubbed Mission Innovation, will come on the first day of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris, senior administration officials said Sunday. The group of nations, which includes the United States, plan to double their research and development budgets for clean energy within the next five years.
Currently, those 19 nations together spend about $10 billion every year on research and development, with about $5 billion of that coming from the United States, according to Brian Deese, senior adviser to President Obama. He said the countries will be particularly focusing on bringing clean energy to developing countries.
Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz believes the White House will be able to win support from Congress to double that research and development budget within five years.
“The innovation agenda is one that actually does attract bipartisan support,” he said.
At the same time, a coalition of 28 investors, led by Bill Gates, who have about $350 billion cumulatively, will announce their commitment to investing in companies that can bring affordable clean energy to the marketplace.
The Breakthrough Energy Coalition brings together billionaires like Richard Branson, Tom Steyer, Jeff Bezos, George Soros and Mark Zuckerberg to invest in companies they believe can help make clean energy widely available. The goal of the coalition is to help speed up the pace of innovation in order to fight the effects of climate change.
“Given the scale of the challenge, we need to be exploring many different paths — and that means we also need to invent new approaches,” Gates said in a statement. “Private companies will ultimately develop these energy breakthroughs, but their work will rely on the kind of basic research that only governments can fund.”
More than 190 nations, accounting for 90 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, are sending delegations to Paris for the two-week summit. They hope to come together on a deal that would see each country agree to a plan to limit their carbon dioxide emissions to limit global warming.
President Obama is set to attend the talks on the first two days, and he’ll leave behind several top cabinet secretaries to lead the American delegation.
While the administration is hopeful the talks will conclude with a concrete deal, many Republicans are opposed to the measures that are central to the American delegation’s emissions plans.
They’re also opposed to Obama’s efforts to avoid Congress voting on the deal, as Senate approval would be unlikely. A group of more than three-dozen senators wrote a letter to Obama pressing him to tell foreign leaders that the ultimate say is with Congress and not the administration.
The announcement scheduled to be made Monday will be the first major international agreement announced in Paris, and the White House is hopeful it will provide a spark of momentum for the rest of the two-week conference.
Deese is hopeful that the partnership among nations and the private investors will show Congress, the public and the markets that there is a real commitment to clean energy and speeding up innovation.
“This is significant and important because we know this basic approach works,” he said.
He added, “When we step up and invest in R&D, then the cost of deploying clean energy goes down.”
Moniz said the investments from countries around the world, which account for about 75 percent of carbon dioxide emissions and include some of the largest oil and gas producers, would lead to nation and region-specific solutions.
“We will be seeing a whole range of technologies emphasized in different places, but all, of course, will be driving toward a clean energy future,” he said.
