Vice President for Climate and Technology

U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for 21st Century Energy

Dank weather and a day off from negotiations didn’t dampen the turnout at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce event on technology today. Before a full house, experts from the U.S. Chamber's Institute for 21st Century Energy and Global Intellectual Property Center as well as General Electric led a discussion on the importance of technology innovation in tackling global climate change.

My talk centered on the scale and scope of the technology challenge. Most people have little appreciation of the degree to which world energy systems would have to be transformed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions significantly. For example, to achieve a 50 percent reduction in global emissions by 2050, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has calculated that, in the electricity sector, the world would have to build 32 1-gigawatt nuclear power plants every year for 40 years, an annual rate much faster than that achieved during the height of nuclear power plant construction in the 1960s and 1970s.

For onshore wind power, the IEA estimates that 14,000 4-megawatt turbines would have to be built a year, and for coal-fired power plants with carbon capture and storage, it estimates 35 500-megawatt plants per year. That’s a lot of technology in a short amount of time, and much of it will have to be built in developing countries that haven’t championed laws that respect intellectual property.

With that as a scene-setter, our Chamber team also received positive reinforcement from delegates and negotiators on the fact that IP is an effective enabler of technology transfer.

Brad Huther described the establishment of the U.S. Chamber’s GIPC and spoke of the value that strong intellectual property systems have in encouraging innovation, investment, job growth, economic activity, and technology commerce and transfer to developing countries. He highlighted the new "Green Technology Coalition" that GIPC is developing, which will focus on promoting clean energy technologies to address climate change.

General Electric's Carl Horton provided the perspective of a global technology company. He noted how continuous innovation and breakthroughs in clean technology is one of the best, most cost-effective long-term solutions to combat climate change. Because most of the innovation occurs in the private sector, Horton highlighted that industry must be seen as a key partner in pursuing climate change objectives. Mechanisms that encourage private sector investment in advanced technologies--such as intellectual property protection, tax incentives, and tariff reduction, to name a few--should be created or preserved.

See Friday's post here, and stay tuned for regular updates on the U.S. Chamber’s participation in Poznan.