The Obama administration took its climate change agenda to the West Coast on Tuesday, opening talks at the first major meeting after Paris to spur global clean energy innovation.
Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said this week’s clean energy conference in San Francisco marks the “first meeting” of a global pact called Mission Innovation that will be key to the success of December’s Paris climate change deal.
The Paris accord brought together nearly 200 countries to agree on cutting greenhouse gas emissions through the middle of the century. Many scientists blame the emissions, formed by burning fossil fuels, for causing global warming, and with it more severe weather, droughts and floods.
In April, more than 175 countries convened in New York to sign the deal, but they must formally ratify the deal through implementation of laws and programs in their own countries.
Moniz emphasized that this week’s Mission Innovation and clean energy ministerial meetings may prove as important as the Paris accord itself.
“We know that the Paris agreement, the Paris accord, was a very important first step,” Moniz said. “But we cannot forget it was a first step and that substantially increasing ambition will be needed with time as we go forward.”
He said tightening the goals of Paris “will call for multiple dimensions on innovation,” including technology, electicity systems, policy, business models and approaches to public understanding of why clean energy is important.
“I think a very important part of the Paris meeting, COP21, was the way innovation was put forward as central to being able to meet the goals of Paris,” he said. “It was a much stronger focus than had been the case in the past.”
Mission Innovation was announced on the first day of the December conference, in which more than 20 countries said they would double their clean energy in the next five years through the development of new, more advanced technologies.
The clean energy meetings will begin in force Wednesday and last through the end of the week.
