In a presentation before national policy-makers and analysts, clean energy CEOs, venture capitalists and academics unveiled the ‘Gigaton Throwdown,’ an assessment of the nation's clean energy potential that identifies seven industries capable of creating 5 million clean energy jobs and reducing CO2 emissions by 5 gigatons to 7 gigatons by 2020.
The report, a collaborative effort between leading researchers at UC Berkeley, MIT, University of Michigan, Stanford and Drexel University, and clean tech leaders, challenges Washington policy-makers to remove obstacles that keep billions of capital investment dollars sitting on the sidelines.
The report identified seven existing industries – biofuel, nuclear, solar, geothermal, wind, building efficiency and construction materials – that could reach gigaton scale over the next 10 years with new infusions of private capital. To attain gigaton scale, a single technology must reduce worldwide carbon dioxide and equivalent greenhouse gas emissions by at least 1 billion tons – a gigaton – per year by 2020, according to the report.
Currently more than $13 trillion in private capital is prepared to invest in the traditional base of energy technologies over the next decade. Redirecting that capital to clean energy is an $8 trillion opportunity that will depend in large part on US energy and climate policy.
The report also identified several key policy barriers preventing that private capital from immediate investment and recommended several changes the U.S. should undertake to spur investment.
For further information, visit www.gigatonthrowdown.org.
SOURCE: The Gigaton Throwdown
