Summary: "In my view, we are 40 years into a 100-year transition to a clean energy economy," says Mike Eckhart, global head of environmental finance and sustainability at Citigroup, in this week’s podcast. “We're in the mainstream of building an industry." Speaking at the Wilson Center’s day-long conference on renewable energy in the developing world, Eckhart outlined changes in technology, market structure, policy, and financial markets that amount to “four big waves of innovation” fueling the advancement of the renewable sector. Technological innovation may be the most apparent of the big waves, Eckhart says, helping to bring prices down, but “we’ve had great policy innovation in the renewable portfolio standards, the investment tax credit, and the production tax credit.” Innovating “with intention” as Eckhart describes, is partly what fueled these waves of advancement. In terms of financing, one of the most successful ideas was separating high risk development phase projects from low risk operating assets, thus “optimizing investment products” and attracting more sophisticated private sector buy-in for renewable markets. Eckhart says there are ways to tailor financing and market structure to expand renewable energy generation in the developing world. Yet, failure to acknowledge and tackle climate change can stall success. "I have never seen a country really move ahead on renewable energy,” says Eckhart, “until after it has made a full-blown commitment to address climate change.” On the heels of the historic COP-21 treaty, this critical connection was echoed by President Obama in his address this week, in which he announced a budget that doubles funding for clean energy research and development by 2020. “Investors and business leaders including Bill Gates, Meg Whitman, and Mark Zuckerberg joined us,” Obama remarked, “pledging their own money to help advance new technologies to the market.” Mike Eckhart spoke at the Wilson Center on October 27, 2015.
