President Obama Joins World Leaders in Announcing 'Mission Innovation'

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• Launching a new Clean Energy Investment Center at the DOE to make information about energy and climate programs at the Department and other government agencies accessible and more understandable to the public, including to mission-driven investors;
• Facilitating investments by charitable foundations, in clean energy technologies and other potentially mission-aligned sectors, through new Treasury Department guidance on impact investing;
• Improving financing options from the U.S. Small Business Administration for private investment funds seeking long-term capital, including early-stage investors in capital-intensive clean energy technologies; and
• Clarifying when pension funds may choose economically targeted investments, with new guidance from the Department of Labor regarding consideration of environmental, social, and governance factors for retirement plan investing.

We have already made incredible strides in driving down the costs of key clean energy options. The cost of LED lights has dropped 90 percent since 2008, large-scale solar by 60 percent, and wind and battery prices declined by over 40 percent. And with decreasing costs has come greater deployment. Since 2008, we’ve gone from 400,000 LED lightbulbs to more than 78 million installed, wind energy production has tripled, and solar has increased more than twenty-fold.

But we know we must continue to do more. Accelerating clean energy innovation is essential to achieving the goal of limiting the rise in global temperatures to below 2˚C and building on the individual climate policies now put forward by more than 180 countries as part of the Paris Climate Conference process. The influx of private and public capital from these two initiatives will make a real difference in meeting this challenge.

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