U.S. Involvement in the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate

The United States believes in the power of public-private cooperation and practical, results-oriented activities when dealing with the combined challenges of energy security, economic growth, and climate change. The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APP) is a key piece of U.S. Government strategy to engage the world’s largest economies in meeting the challenge of a cleaner energy future.

As a unique public-private forum for government and industry leaders from seven of the world’s largest economies, the APP provides pathbreaking opportunities to identify, commercialize, and deploy cleaner technologies. Partner countries Australia, Canada, China, India, Japan, South Korea, and the United States collectively account for more than half of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, population, GDP, and energy consumption.

Using a sectoral approach that breaks climate and clean development challenges into more manageable Task Forces - Aluminum, Buildings and Appliances, Cement, Cleaner Fossil Energy, Coal Mining, Power Generation and Transmission, Renewable Energy and Distributed Generation, and Steel - helps APP Partners take advantage of readily available opportunities to increase efficiency and reduce emissions. In addition to such targeted, immediate actions on the ground, a sectoral focus also enables Partners to lay the foundations for long-term market transformation.

The APP’s particular programmatic emphasis provides a concrete way for public and private leaders in each of these sectors to focus on real-world priorities. In a unique way, the APP is bringing climate change policymakers together with clean energy project developers and technical experts. Through its successes in opening dialogue between public policy makers and private project developers, the APP facilitates frank and candid discussions that lead to policy and regulatory changes, resulting in the greater deployment of clean energy technologies and practices. Linking policy makers with domestic implementers also increases possibilities for uptake of cleaner technologies, and enlarges the universe of possible climate change actions.

Since the beginning of the program, the United States has provided approximately $65 million to the implementation of the Partnership, part of overall announced APP commitments of approximately $200 million from various Partner countries. U.S. APP funding is essentially seed capital that has already resulted in committed cost-share funds of $44 million for selected projects, and is expected to leverage more than $480 million in additional downstream funding through ancillary funding and financing from concessional and commercial banks.

The combination of U.S. Government investment with the APP’s ability to bring the right people together to discuss and act on timely opportunities has generated a significant number of successes and benefits at multiple levels. APP activities are serving not only to cut greenhouse gas emissions but also to meet energy needs in emerging markets. Moreover, APP projects are helping transform energy markets in ways that will continue to pay dividends in years to come. APP work is building capacity, facilitating increased clean energy finance, improving infrastructure and distribution networks in rural areas with no clean energy options, and creating strategic regional networks and links.

For the United States, perhaps the most important and far-reaching benefit of the APP is the degree to which the Partnership has promoted common understanding and knowledge among the seven member countries of their respective barriers and opportunities. Besides the concrete, near term benefits Partnership activities are already yielding, this kind of demonstrated mutual commitment to progress on one of the central challenges of our time has led to a more effective negotiating environment and increased engagement with not only India and China, but our key developed country partners as well.

As the following pages demonstrate, U.S. activities in the APP have met and exceeded expectations since the Partnership’s first meeting in 2006. The creative, practical cooperation fostered by the APP continues to help the United States and all Partner countries translate political commitment into positive results by creating realistic actions toward mutual energy efficiency, climate, sustainable development, and energy security goals.

The Power of Public-Private Partnership ‘APP support gave us the confidence to rapidly accelerate our expansion plans in India. With this newfound momentum we are able to leverage much more interest and potential investment in our business for yet further growth. The end result of all of this is more opportunity for our customer base in India to access solar energy and essential services’. – Damian Miller, Orb Energy The private sector is a critical component of any effective attempt to address the climate challenge. By providing an unprecedented forum to unite the knowledge and innovation of private industry with the expertise of senior policymakers, the APP is fostering the creative solutions necessary to achieve practical objectives. More than 200 businesses are already involved in APP efforts, as well as over a dozen major industry associations. Selected U.S. APP funded projects have already resulted in committed cost-share funds of $44 million for selected projects, and are expected to leverage more than $480 million in additional downstream funding through ancillary funding and financing from concessional and commercial banks. The new technologies, intellectual capital, market presence, and financial expertise that private sector participants bring to the APP are essential to its clean development efforts.

In turn, APP participation provides significant advantages to private sector stakeholders. Through APP cooperation, companies are finding ways to improve the environment while gaining access to global markets in the critical sectors addressed by the Partnership. Comparative advantages that the APP brings to participants include gaining access to new opportunities to develop and expand business relationships in APP countries, increased ability to leverage the knowledge and resources of a diverse group of countries, and entry into strong networks of international, regional, and local leaders in clean development.