This blog is cross-posted on the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy blog. 

Ingenuity is one of our country’s greatest assets. America’s entrepreneurs and innovators have a legacy of unleashing their creativity, grit, and imagination to invent, discover, and build solutions that not only contribute to our growing economy, but also solve some of the toughest challenges facing the nation. Investing in homegrown innovation, including the development of new, clean-energy technologies, is a crucial part of the fight against climate change – and is key to keeping America on the leading edge of the world’s transition to a low-carbon economy.

That’s why today, we’re hosting a Clean Energy Investment Summit at the White House, where we’re announcing $4 billion in independent commitments by major foundations, institutional investors, and others to fund innovative solutions to help fight climate change, including technologies with breakthrough potential to reduce carbon pollution.

Taken together, these commitments far surpass the initial $2 billion goal set at the launch of the Administration’s Clean Energy Investment Initiative last February.  And we look forward to seeing this initiative continue to build momentum in the months ahead.

In addition, as part of today’s Summit, the Administration is announcing a series of new executive actions to that will further encourage private-sector investment in clean-energy innovation. These include:

• Launching a new Clean Energy Impact Investment Center at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to make information about energy and climate programs at DOE and other government agencies accessible and more understandable to the public, including to mission-driven investors;
• Facilitating Issuing guidance on impact investments by charitable foundations in clean energy technologies and other potentially mission-aligned sectors; and
• Improving financing options from the U.S. Small Business Administration for private investment funds seeking long-term capital.

Thanks to past investments, consumers are already benefitting from breakthrough technologies developed by our nation’s world-class researchers and entrepreneurs. We’ve seen major advances in solar photovoltaics, wind power, advanced batteries, energy-efficient lighting, and fuel cells – and the cost of solar energy systems has plummeted by over 50 percent in the past five years alone.

We must continue investing in these kinds of innovations if we are to maintain our leadership in reducing carbon pollution while also growing the economy.

Today’s announcements will help ensure that even more American-made clean energy technologies can make the leap from an idea, to the laboratory, to the global marketplace. We look forward to continuing to unleash the power and potential of innovations that serve both our economy and our environment, and to the as-yet-unimagined breakthroughs still to come.

Wind turbines photo courtesy of Shutterstock.