The White House is seeking to double clean energy commitments to $30 billion per year to help countries meet their emission reduction goals under the Paris climate deal.
The announcement came Thursday during the first major meeting since the Paris deal was agreed to in December, in a collaboration called Mission Innovation.
The meeting is being held in San Francisco alongside the seventh annual global Clean Energy Ministerial.
Mission Innovation is a pact among the U.S. and 19 other countries to fund the development of advanced clean energy technologies, meant to ensure that countries meet their greenhouse emission reduction goals under the Paris agreement. Many scientists blame the emissions for causing the Earth’s temperature to rise, resulting in devastating drought and sea-level rise.
“Last year, in Paris, the president and the leaders of 19 countries launched Mission Innovation, a new effort to double public investment in clean energy research and development over five years,” the White House said. “Today, those 20 nations, and the European Union as the newest partner, are announcing their specific plans to meet that target, and committing to invest nearly $30 billion per year in public clean energy research and development by 2021.”
White House officials on a call with reporters said the announcement marks a doubling from the initial pledge of $15 billion per year that was made in Paris.
In addition, dozens of companies, countries, groups and cities pledged another $1.5 billion in funding available to accelerate the deployment of clean energy.
Ali Zaidi, the White House Budget Office’s associate director for energy, said they are seeing support from both Republicans and Democrats to fund the U.S. portion of Mission Innovation in President Obama’s budget.
Despite his optimism, the spending bill that would fund the innovation plan failed to pass in the House ahead of the Memorial Day recess, because of a controversial LGBT amendment.
