DOE released on September 20th the Climate Change Technology Program (CCTP) Strategic Plan, which details measures to accelerate the development and reduce the cost of new and advanced technologies that avoid, reduce, or capture and store greenhouse gas emissions. CCTP is the technology component of a comprehensive U.S. strategy introduced by President Bush in 2002 to combat climate change. That strategy includes measures to advance climate change science; spur clean energy technology development and deployment; promote international collaboration; and slow the growth of greenhouse gas emissions through voluntary, incentive-based, and mandatory partnerships.
The CCTP Strategic Plan organizes roughly $3 billion in federal spending for climate technology research, development, demonstration, and deployment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase economic growth. The plan sets six complementary goals: (1) reducing emissions from energy use and infrastructure; (2) reducing emissions from energy supply; (3 ) capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide; (4) reducing emissions of other greenhouse gases; (5) measuring and monitoring emissions; and (6) bolstering the contributions of basic science to climate change. It examines energy efficiency, hydrogen, renewable energy, and renewable fuels among an array of other low-emissions energy technologies.
The strategic plan also notes the difficulty of stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions; examining a range of scenarios, the report notes that cumulative global emissions over the next century would have to be reduced by the equivalent of 300 billion to a trillion metric tons of carbon. Deploying a million megawatts of wind power would cut emissions by only about 1 billion metric tons of carbon per year. On the other hand, advanced energy efficiency technologies could cut global carbon emissions by 270 billion tons over the next century. See the DOE press release and the CCTP Strategic Plan .
U.S. Companies and Financial Institutions are Alert to Climate Change
Climate change has become a major concern among leading U.S. financial institutions and companies, according to a report issued in September by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), a coalition of global investors with more than $31.5 trillion in assets. On February 1st, CDP requested information on corporate risks and opportunities associated with climate change from more than 2,000 companies globally, including the world's 500 largest publicly owned companies. Of the responding companies, 87 percent indicated that climate change represented "commercial risks and/or opportunities," although only 48 percent of those had implemented a greenhouse gas reduction program.
The report also notes that "clean tech"—a category that includes clean energy along with water resource and environmental remediation technologies—has become the fifth largest venture capital investment category in North America , trailing only biotechnology, software, medical technology, and telecommunications. The report estimates that the clean energy market will grow from $39.9 billion currently to $167.2 billion by 2015. The trend has caught the attention of numerous financial institutions: According to the report, AIG, Allianz and Goldman Sachs have released dedicated climate change policies in the past 12 months. See the CDP press release , which includes links to the full report.
The clean energy investment trend was driven home last month by the announcement that an investment group had sunk more than $1 billion into clean technology ventures over the previous 18 months. The members of the Investor Network on Climate Risk invested in such technologies as hydrogen fuel cells, renewable energy, water technologies, and advanced materials. For example, the nation's two largest public pension funds—the California Public Employees' Retirement System and the California State Teachers' Retirement System—have invested a total of $350 million in energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. In addition, the New York Retirement Fund has committed $30 million to the Carlyle/Riverstone Renewable Energy Infrastructure Fund I, which has raised a total of $600 million to invest in renewable energy projects. See the press release from the Investor Network on Climate Risk .
