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Sarnoff, Joshua D. --- "Government choices in innovation funding" [2016] ELECD 531; in Sarnoff, D. Joshua (ed), "Research Handbook on Intellectual Property and Climate Change" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016) 200

Book Title: Research Handbook on Intellectual Property and Climate Change

Editor(s): Sarnoff, D. Joshua

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849804677

Section: Chapter 11

Section Title: Government choices in innovation funding

Author(s): Sarnoff, Joshua D.

Number of pages: 34

Abstract/Description:

Huge amounts of money will soon be spent by governmental and private entities: (1) to develop technology to reduce the costs of climate change mitigation and adaptation; and (2) to deploy new energy and transportation infrastructures. Developed country members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) committed in the 2010 Cancún Agreement to transfer to developing countries public and private funding and technology as mitigation measures. The amount of agreed funding was at least $30 billion per year, rising to at least $100 billion per year by 2020. In the 2011 Durban Platform and the 2015 Paris Agreement, the UNFCCC reaffirmed that commitment and created the framework institutional structure for implementing it. Analyses suggest that the agreed funding is low by an order of magnitude, as developing countries may need at least $1 trillion per year to meet mitigation and adaptation needs. Tens (and perhaps hundreds) of trillions of dollars also will flow to develop and disseminate a wide range of new technologies for a variety of purposes (collectively referred to as climate change technologies). These new technologies include: upgrading energy, transportation, and other infrastructure; developing low greenhouse gas (GHG)-emitting consumer and industrial products; and mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change. The funds will come either from governments or from private sources subject to government incentives and regulation of market behaviors.