Paris, 11 December, 2015 – Government and private sector leaders expressed their commitment on Tuesday to achieve a major increase in investments for research and development in low-carbon technologies and ways to speed up their diffusion in developing countries through multilateral partnerships.

"Innovation is at the heart of fighting climate change" said Fatih Birol to introduce the event.

This Lima to Paris Action Agenda (LPAA) Focus on Innovation built on the pledges made at COP 21 on November 30 under “Mission innovation”. The initiative of 20 countries, all major economies, aims to dramatically accelerate public and private global clean energy innovation, including doubling their current research and development (R&D) investments in the sector.

The initiative is coupled with a private sector effort called the “Breakthrough Energy Coalition”. Lead by Bill Gates, 28 investors from 10 countries are committed to invest extraordinary levels of private capital in clean energy.

High-level participants highlighted the importance of accelerating the development and deployment of affordable low-carbon solutions. M. Moniz, US Secretary of Energy, particularly insisted on the virtues circle of increasing innovation, reducing costs, and low-carbon technologies up-take and deployment.

Ajay Mathur, Director General, Bureau of Energy Efficiency, India re-iterated the need to ensure local conditions drove technology development priorities, and that local innovation capacity was key to ensure solutions met local needs.

Cooperation between actors, countries was largely called for by countries and private actors. “We need to join all our forces for innovation, between public and private research, between fundamental and applied research” said Mme Royal, French minister for ecology, sustainable development and energy. Liu Zhenya, Chairman State Grid Corporation of China, expressed the hope “that international organizations and institutes, governments and energy companies can all actively engage, reach consensus, strengthen cooperation and jointly promote innovative developments”. Acknowledging the broad range of existing collaborative efforts, Maroš Šefčovič, EU Vice President noted that “it will be important for the future to look into how we can streamline and synergise existing efforts to create truly global collaboration in energy technology innovation’’.

The private sector was also very much present to indicate its eagerness to by a driving force behind the clean energy technology revolution. Lanzatech CEO Jennifer Holmgren noted how technology could turn carbon from a liability to a resource, while Simone Mori, Executive Vice President of Enel, and Mr. Clamadieu, CEO of Solvay, pointed out that carbon pricing is essential to increase the available finance for public R&D investments, which has to date, been characterized by their “timidity.”

Under the CTCN moderation, participants also discussed how to accelerate innovation in developing countries. While recognizing that more and more innovation was coming from emerging and developing states, Leaders from the public and private sectors plead for enhancing local innovation capacity in developing countries with more cooperation and continuity in the support received so as to create real innovation capacities.

The event particularly emphasized the importance of having a broad conception of innovation, looking at innovative way to implement actions, regulation, or at innovative business model. In a context of competing financing institutions, “financial innovation is key to stay ahead” said Dr Preety Bhandari from the Asian development bank. To introduce renewable energy in villages, new public-private partnerships adapted to local communities and SMEs should be developed claimed Secou SARR, the Director of Enda-Energie from Senegal.

Preparing the next steps of this global mobilization in favor of climate innovation, Fatih Birol led a discussion about the role played by international collaboration in increasing capacity and accelerating innovation. This included commentaries by country leaders associated with the Clean Energy Ministerial and The Innovation for Cool Earth Forum. The Private sector was also well represented as Peter Bakker, CEO of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, showcased the main results of the collaborative platform Low Carbon Technology Partnerships Initiative (LCTPi) - a series of concrete and cooperative action plans for the large-scale development and deployment of low-carbon technologies. The LCTPi cement initiative from the CSI was presented by Jorge Mario Velazquez, CEO of ARGOS Cementos. 26 companies, representing one third of the industry operating in 100 countries, took the commitment to reduce their carbon footprint through the implementation a joint action plan.

On Thursday 10 December the IEA hosted a follow-up event to the LPAA Focus held on Tuesday (“Accelerating Innovation through Energy Technology Collaboration”): this companion debate explored international multi-lateral frameworks for collaborating on energy technology innovation, with representatives of the Governments of Unites States, United Kingdom, Japan and European Commission.

ABOUT the LPAA

The Lima-Paris Action Agenda is a joint undertaking of the Peruvian and French COP presidencies, the Office of the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the UNFCCC Secretariat. It aims to strengthen climate action throughout 2015, in Paris in December and well beyond through: mobilizing robust global action towards low carbon and resilient societies; providing enhanced support to existing initiatives, such as those launched during the NY SG Climate summit in September 2014; and mobilizing new partners and providing a platform for the visibility of their actions, commitments and results in the run up to COP21. Learn more at http://newsroom.unfccc.int/lpaa/about/

The main LPAA initiatives related to Innovation are:

• Innovation Mission
• Cement sustainable Initiative – LCTPi
• Scaling up Renewable Energy - LCTPi

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Diane Gaillard - LPAA Press Officer: +33 6 99 62 49 79 | presse@cop21.gouv.fr
Press contact for Innovation - Greg Frost | Greg.FROST@iea.org

Event Programme online: http://newsroom.unfccc.int/lpaa/cop-21/

NAZCA climate commitments platform Over 10.000 concrete actions, from cities, companies, investors, foundations, NGOs http://climateaction.unfccc.int/

Twitter UNFCCC:@UNFCCC (Eng.), @CCNUCC (Fr.), @CMNUCC (Esp.), @UNKlima (De.)
Twitter LPAA: @LPAA_Live | #LPAA
YouTube UNFCCC: https://www.youtube.com/user/climateconference
YouTube COP21:http://bit.ly/1G7HWWj

Flickr (copyright free photos):https://www.flickr.com/photos/136161474@N05/albums