President Barack Obama is committed to addressing the impacts of climate change to protect future generations, the White House said on Tuesday.
As part of that effort, the administration today is launching a Clean Energy Investment Initiative and announcing a goal to catalyze USD two billion of expanded private-sector investment in solutions to climate change, including innovative technologies with breakthrough potential to reduce carbon pollution, the White House announced.
Further clean-energy innovation to improve the cost, performance and scalability of low-carbon energy technologies will be critical to taking action against climate change, the announcement said.
Substantial technological progress has been made in recent years in solar photo-voltaics, wind power, advanced batteries, energy-efficient lighting and fuel cells. "For example, the cost of solar energy systems has decreased 50 percent since 2010 alone, but additional investment is needed," the announcement said.
Mission-driven investors - such as foundations, university endowments and institutional investors - can play a catalytic role in accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy, it said.
"A growing number of such organizations have committed to investing in clean-energy innovation and solutions to climate change, in pursuit of both financial returns and mission-aligned impact," the statement said.
"Today's announcements will help clean-energy investors reduce transaction costs, spread promising investment models and increase their climate mitigation impact," it added.
"That is why the US Department of Energy (DOE) is announcing that it will help catalyze philanthropic activity through the Clean Energy Investment Initiative by leading an effort to identify opportunities to leverage its world-class technical expertise, technologies and programs to assist in understanding opportunities and needs that drive clean-energy innovation - with a focus on mission-oriented investors seeking climate and environmental impact," the statement said.
DOE will work to mobilize a broad range of philanthropists and impact investors to scale up investments throughout the energy-innovation pipeline, from laboratory research and development to start-up funding to growth-stage financing - supporting the kind of technology innovation that the ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy) Summit, where this initiative was announced, is all about, it said.
To kick off this call to action, the White House will host a Clean Energy Investment Summit this spring as a forum for foundations, family offices and institutional investors to scale up private-sector investment in clean-energy innovation, the White House said.