California’s Clean Energy Success Gets Outing at UN Climate Forum
Many of the 197 nations that are parties to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change are looking for best ways to meet the terms of that agreement by 2020.
For some, it will demand a combination of technology and innovation – the combination of which is a major topic of discussion at the 8th Sustainable Innovation Forum in Bonn, Germany. The forum is part of the activities connected to the 2017 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP23.
The forum brings together policy makers with climate technology innovators, including California Environment Protection Agency Secretary Matt Rodriguez and California Air Resources Board Chair Mary Nichols.
On Nov. 14, California Energy Commissioner David Hochschild spoke about California and renewable energy.
Hochschild’s talk was of special interest to many of the 600 in attendance given California’s success in renewable energy. California currently gets 29 percent of its electricity from renewable resources. The state is on track to meet the goal of 50 percent of its electricity supply from renewables by 2030.
In his presentation, titled “California and The Dawn of the Clean Energy Era,” Hochschild talked about how renewable energy is a growing part of electric generation in the United States, how California’s gross domestic product has grown by 28 percent while greenhouse gas emissions fell 8 percent, and how California leads the U.S. in installed renewable energy.
The innovation forum is the latest global step towards building a dialogue on how countries can stay on a path to controlling climate change according to the terms of the Paris Agreement.
That agreement seeks to keep global temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius and to limit the temperature increase even further - to 1.5 degrees Celsius - above pre-industrial levels.
Forum topics include data innovation and its use to further climate change science, the fast tracking of renewable power projects, and how data and technology can advance climate-smart agriculture.
The COP 23 conference ended Nov. 17.
