About the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate

The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate is an innovative effort to accelerate the development and deployment of clean energy technologies. The Partnership employs a unique public-private partnership model to bring together industry stakeholders and government officials to achieve Partnership goals. The United States remains committed to supporting the APP and maintains that it is an integral component of U.S. efforts to combat climate change, promote energy security, and foster international economic growth and cooperation.

The Partnership addresses these issues through eight sector-based Task Forces which implement projects that address the Task Force Action Plans. The Partnership as a whole has endorsed over 115 projects across the eight Task Forces. To date, the United States has committed $70 million to support APP projects.  The U.S. APP Program Office at the Department of State is requesting an additional $52 million in funding for fiscal year 2009.

Partners

APP partners Australia, Canada, China, India, Japan, South Korea, and the United States have agreed to work together and with private sector partners to meet goals for energy security, national air pollution reduction, and climate change in ways that promote sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction. The Partnership will focus on expanding investment and trade in cleaner energy technologies, goods and services in key market sectors.

Task Forces

The Partners have approved eight public-private sector task forces.  The United States is integrally involved in each of the Task Forces, maintaining two public sector and two private sector members on each.  The Task Forces cover eight sectors:

1. Aluminum
2. Buildings and Appliances
3. Cement
4. Cleaner Fossil Energy
5. Coal Mining
6. Power Generation and Transmission
7. Renewable Energy and Distributed Generation
8. Steel
   

The seven partner countries represent about half of the world's economy, population and energy use, and they produce about 65% of the world’s coal, more than 60% of the world’s steel, 52% of world’s aluminum, and 61% of the world’s cement.

Purpose

The purposes of the Partnership are to:

• Create a voluntary, non-legally binding framework for international cooperation to facilitate the development, diffusion, deployment, and transfer of existing, emerging and longer term cost- effective, cleaner, more efficient technologies and practices among the Partners through concrete and substantial cooperation so as to achieve practical results.
• Promote and create enabling environments to assist in such efforts.
• Facilitate attainment of the Partners' respective national pollution reduction, energy security and climate change objectives; and
• Provide a forum for exploring the Partners' respective policy approaches relevant to addressing interlinked development, energy, environment, and climate change issues within the context of clean development goals, and for sharing experiences in developing and implementing respective national development and energy strategies.

Sectoral Approach

The Asia-Pacific Partnership represents an important element of the U.S. strategy to combat climate change and promote a cleaner energy future. By using a sectoral approach to address climate change, the Partnership is able to target critical areas where action is most needed and where results are attainable in the near term. The eight sectors that the APP addresses include five energy intensive sectors - Aluminum, Buildings and Appliances, Cement, Coal Mining, and Steel - and three energy supply sectors - Cleaner Fossil Energy, Power Generation and Transmission, and Renewable Energy and Distributed Generation.

The APP focuses its efforts in these sectors through Task Forces, which incorporate a unique public-private partnership model that brings together industry leaders and stakeholders with government officials from the seven Partner countries. By incorporating both the public and private sectors, the APP is able to accelerate the dissemination of best practices in each sector to all levels of government policy makers as well as to private firms engaged in industry activities. This model distributes best practices within each sector domestically from business to business (B2B), from business to government (B2G), and from government to business (G2B) by providing a domestic forum for discussion and knowledge sharing.  In the United States, this occurs through the U.S Task Force meetings, held regularly by each Task Force. 

The issue of global climate change cannot be solved domestically alone, however. The APP facilitates information and best practices transfer via B2B, B2G, and G2B networks not only domestically within each Partner country, but through international technology and knowledge transfer between and among Partner countries.  International Task Force meetings held approximately twice annually provide each of the seven Partner countries with a forum for public and private sector actors in each Task Force to engage in information sharing.

The sectoral approach allows for Partner governments to target key areas where greenhouse gas emissions are high and/or growing fast.  It also allows for national climate change strategies to focus on the sectors where international cooperation is critical in facilitating technology and best practices transfer.  This level of cooperation occurs through discrete projects and defined areas of cooperation. For example, in the Steel sector, the APP provides the first ever forum for B2B cooperation among Partner countries focusing on basic data collection, benchmarking, and best practices.  While the Aluminum sector has a long history of international cooperation, the APP provides the opportunity to focus efforts on mitigating the emissions of perfluorocarbons, a highly potent greenhouse gas.  Federal and local policies have a large impact on the financial viability of renewable energy and distributed generation technologies. To address this, the Renewable Energy and Distributed Generation Task Force conducted a thorough seven country policy inventory and analysis related to these technologies. Such project-level successes and cooperation of the eight APP Task Forces are laying the groundwork for enhanced public-private international cooperation on a sectoral basis. 

Through its efforts to facilitate transfer of clean technology and best practice techniques, and to provide a forum for discussion between Partner countries, the APP provides critical support to a range of approaches to address climate change at the sectoral level.

History

The United States believes that great progress can be made by working with other nations to advance the related objectives of improving economic and energy security, alleviating poverty, improving human health, reducing harmful air pollution, and addressing the long-term problem of climate change.

In July 2005, the United States was joined with Australia, China, India, Japan, and the South Korea in the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. The Partnership is an innovative effort to accelerate the development and deployment of clean energy technologies through a voluntary public-private partnership among these nations, which have agreed to work together and with their respective private sector on energy security, national air pollution reduction, and climate change in ways that promote sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction. Together, Partner countries account for about half of the world's population and more than half of the world's economy and energy use.

Ministers from the six original Partner countries held an inaugural meeting in January 2006 in Sydney, Australia. At that time, Partners agreed to a Communiqué, Charter, and Work Plan calling for the development of Task Forces to formulate sustainable solutions to our shared challenges through practical approaches in eight key sectors: Aluminum, Buildings and Appliances, Cement; Cleaner Fossil Energy, Coal Mining, Power Generation and Transmission, Renewable Energy and Distributed Generation, and Steel.

Task Forces are staffed by up to four official members per country, from both the government and private sector, representing broader national and sectoral interests. The Partnership's Policy and Implementation Committee (PIC) met  for a second time in conjunction with the first meeting of the Task Forces, in April 2006 in Berkeley, California, to initiate the work of the Task Forces. More than 300 participants, representing the six Partner countries' industry, government, and research institutions, met and began a collaborative process to outline objectives and identify projects in each sectoral area.

The Task Forces met independently in the following months to develop Action Plans, which were endorsed by the PIC at their second meeting, held in October 2006 in Jeju, South Korea. The PIC also reviewed nearly 100 projects related to the Action Plans.The eight Action Plans were the product of the Task Forces' initial collaborative efforts to detail both immediate- and mid-term specific actions and projects. This signaled the start of the implementation phase of an ongoing series of programs designed to implement cleaner, cost-effective energy technologies and practices among the Partners.

 In July 2007, the PIC met for the third time in Tokyo, Japan. At that meeting, the Task Forces updated the PIC members on the status of their ongoing work and reported on the implementation progress of their activities endorsed in Jeju, South Korea. The PIC members agreed to endorse a number of additional projects, bringing the total to 109. They discussed arrangements for the Ministerial meeting to be hosted by India in October 2007, and reached agreement on preparations for those sessions and achievements to be presented to Ministers.  The Task Forces continued their work and held meetings in late 2007.

At the New Delhi Ministerial meeting in October 2007, the Partner ministers released a Communique‚ which warmly welcomed Canada as the seventh member of the Partnership, recognized the eight Action Plans and over 100 projects, including the eighteen flagship projects exemplifying the scale and potential of the cooperation being undertaken by the Partners, and announced the launch of the implementation phase of the Asia-Pacific Energy Technology Cooperation Centre.

Throughout the first half of 2008, the Task Forces further pursued their cooperative activities, meeting as needed.  In May 2008, the PIC members met for the fifth time in Seattle, Washington, United States.  The Task Forces presented to the PIC members on the status of ongoing projects.  The PIC members discussed a proposal paper on the addition of a Road Transport Task Force submitted by Japan, and Canada was welcomed as a co-chair of the Cement Task Force.

For more information on the Asia-Pacific Partnership, the PIC and Ministerial meeting, or the projects endorsed by the Task Forces, please visit the APP International Website.