ECONOMIC REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT

while creating new jobs and raising standards of living. The submission of
ambitious national contributions in five-year cycles gives investors and technology
innovators a clear indicator that the world will demand clean power
plants, energy efficient factories and buildings, and low carbon transportation
both in the short term and in the decades to come.
Another example of U.S. diplomatic leadership to drive global action
on climate change mitigation is the Administration’s work over several
years toward an amendment to the 1987 Montreal Protocol to phase down
the global production and consumption of hydrofluorocarbons, potent
greenhouse gases. This work included the development of leader-level joint
statements with China in 2013 and with India in 2015. In October 2016, the
197 Parties to the Montreal Protocol agreed to amend the Protocol to phase
down HFC use in developed countries beginning in 2019, and to freeze and
subsequently phase down HFC use in the vast majority of developing countries
in 2024 (UNEP 2016). The agreement could avoid up to 0.5 degrees
Celsius of warming by the end of the century, and it also provides financing
to developing countries to help them transition to new air conditioning and
refrigeration technologies that do not use HFCs.
The United States helped found the Clean Energy Ministerial, an ambitious
effort among 25 governments representing around 75 percent of global
greenhouse gas emissions and 90 percent of global clean energy investments.
Through annual ministerial meetings (the United States hosted in 2010
and 2016), collaborative initiatives, and high-profile campaigns, the CEM
is bringing together the world’s largest countries, the private sector, and
other stakeholders for real-world collaboration to accelerate the global clean
energy transition. Twenty-one countries, the European Union, nearly 60
companies and organizations, and 10 subnational governments, made more
than $1.5 billion in commitments to accelerate the deployment of clean
energy and increase energy access at the June 2016 Clean Energy Ministerial.
On the first day of the Paris Conference, President Obama joined
19 other world leaders to launch Mission Innovation—a commitment to
accelerate public and private global clean energy innovation. Twenty-two
governments, representing well over 80 percent of the global clean energy
research and development (R&D) funding base, have now agreed under
Mission Innovation to seek to double their R&D investments over five years
(Mission Innovation 2016). In addition, a coalition of 28 global investors
committed to supporting early-stage breakthrough energy technologies in
countries that have joined Mission Innovation (Bodnar and Turk 2015). The
combination of ambitious commitments and broad support for innovation
and technology will help ratchet up energy investments over the coming
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