The Clean Energy world is coming to Pittsburgh

By Gerard J. Ostheimer, CEO, Biofuture Workshop, Co-Manager, Clean Energy Ministerial Biofuture Campaign

Special to The Digest

This September in Pittsburgh, the U.S. Department of Energy will host the first-ever Global Clean Energy Action Forum (GCEAF), a joint convening of the 13th Clean Energy Ministerial and the 7th Mission Innovation ministerial. U.S. Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, is hosting her counterparts from Energy Ministries across the world for the GCEAF in Pittsburgh on September 21-23. Over 4,000 delegates from governments, international organizations, industry, academia, and NGOs have already registered. The three-day event will cover the entire cleantech spectrum via Ministerial plenaries, topical roundtables, and over 100 technology-specific events with energy and science ministers from 31 countries, CEOs, and experts from around the world.

Notable speakers will include:

• Jennifer Granholm, U.S. Secretary of Energy
• John Kerry, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate
• Fatih Birol, IEA Executive Director
• Kadri Simson, EU Commissioner for Energy
• Bill Gates, Co-Chair, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
• Jigar Shah, Director, DOE Loan Programs Office
• Danielle Merfeld, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, GE Renewable Energy
• Anne Simpson, Global Head of Sustainability, Franklin Templeton

The GCEAF theme is “Rapid Innovation and Deployment”. How can the pace and scale of innovation for the deployment of clean energy technologies be accelerated? How can a collaborative partnership across the innovation-to-deployment continuum to successfully deploy commercially viable technologies in time to combat the climate crisis in this urgent decade of delivery?

We would like the Biofuels Digest readership to know that Brazil, Canada, India, Netherlands, and the United States are collaborating with industry leaders and additional international partners to focus global attention on what must be done to accelerate the production and use of sustainable, low GHG-emissions fuels, chemicals, and materials.

The collaboration, known collectively as the Clean Energy Ministerial Biofuture Platform Initiative, leads global actions to accelerate development, scale-up, and deployment of sustainable bio-based alternatives to fossil-based fuels, chemicals, and materials. The Initiative is chaired by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), facilitated by the International Energy Agency, and supported by the Biofuture Campaign. The Initiative provides a forum for policy dialogue and collaboration among leading countries, organizations, academia. The current CEM Initiative was spring boarded by the original 22-country Biofuture Platform established in 2016, under the leadership of Brazil.

For GCEAF, the Biofuture Initiative is organizing two prominent events that focus on sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and the importance of carbon accounting to the future of transport decarbonization. The SAF event is being co-organized with Clean Skies for Tomorrow, a collaboration between the World Economic Forum, Rocky Mountain Institute, the Energy Transition Commission, and industry partners.

Together with the DOE Loan Program Office, the Biofuture Initiative is hosting a Business Forum that will look at SAF project finance and the relevance of best practices in carbon accounting to project finance. We are excited to discuss these topics with a wide range of investors from institutions such as Barclays, BlackRock, and Vanguard Renewables.

The GCEAF comes at a pivotal time. The world is on the cusp of the most important energy transition human society has ever seen and needs to look back at 2022 as the year giant steps were taken to build a new energy economy that benefits all, improves energy security, tackles climate change, and reaps the rewards of a clean energy market that will exceed $23 trillion by the end of this decade.

It’s exciting to have so many leaders of the global bioeconomy join us at GCEAF in Pittsburgh and encourage readers of the Digest to join use. Registration for GCEAF is free but closes on September 9^th.