Climate and Advanced Energy

While a disappointment, the United States’ notification of intent to withdraw from the Paris Agreement was already largely ‘priced in’ to political discourse and expectations. What matters most now is continued bold leadership—and hard, prosaic work—by the entities that have at least as much control over the future US emissions trajectory as the federal government.

H.E. Sebastián Piñera, president of Chile, discusses Chile’s upcoming hosting of the COP25 climate conference, what has motivated Chile’s leadership on climate and clean energy and where it fits into the country’s global strategy, and what steps the country is taking at home to lead by example.

Millions of young people around the world took to the streets for the Global Climate Strike to demand that governments take bolder action to address the climate crisis. But youth activists are not just skipping school to protest, they are also taking concrete steps to influence the policymaking process.

There are compelling reasons for energy markets, and their governance, to move in the direction of a more transactive energy system. Is blockchain a suitable platform for the transactive electricity market of the future, enabling distributed energy resources to transact with each other and capture value, while collectively helping balance the grid?

Given its unique role as both a potential source of emissions—as well as storage—for carbon, the land use sector may play a crucial role in the world’s success or failure in avoiding dangerous levels of climate change over this century. Nowhere is the pivotal role of land use more apparent than in tropical forests.

In the wake of turbulence in efforts to address climate change and the current absence of US federal leadership, it is important for motivated states and actors to identify a handful of high-impact areas where progress can be made and work to specifically address them.