COP21: Mission Innovation to accelerate clean energy revolution

Mission Innovation initiative that aims to accelerate the clean energy innovation has been jointly launched by 21 countries at UN Climate Change Conference 2015 (COP21) currently taking place in Paris.

Mission Innovation has been launched in an effort to reinvigorate and accelerate public and private global clean energy innovation with the objective to make clean energy widely affordable. In addition to 21 countries that launched the initiative, other countries will be encouraged to join in the future.

Under the initiative, each participating country will seek to double its governmental and/or state-directed clean energy research and development investment over five years. New investments would be focused on transformational clean energy technology innovations that can be scalable to varying economic and energy market conditions that exist in participating countries and in the broader world.

Research and development projects would be designed and managed to attract private investors willing to advance commercialization, and participating countries have committed to work closely with the private sector as it increases its investment in the earlier-stage clean energy companies that emerge from government research and development programs.

Working with existing international institutions, participating countries will cooperate and collaborate to help governments, private investors, and technology innovators to make available data, technology expertise, and analysis in order to promote commercialization and dissemination of clean energy technologies so they reach global market penetration.

Also, each participating country commits to provide, on an annual basis, transparent, easily-accessible information on its respective clean energy research and development efforts to promote transparency, engage stakeholders broadly, spur identification of collaborative opportunities, and provide the private sector more actionable information to improve its ability to make investment decisions.

Together with the Mission Innovation, Bill Gates-led private sector effort to collaborate with public sector’s Mission Innovation initiative called the Breakthrough Energy Coalition has been launched.

Comprised of a group of 25 private investors from 10 countries, it will invest in companies that have the best chance to make reliable zero-carbon energy available to everyone at an affordable price.

The countries participating in the new initiative include: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States of America.

Image: COP21