For decades, Americans and Europeans have joined forces successfully to address the key challenges facing us. Today, an opportunity exists to tackle the common challenge of climate change and energy security – together.
A stable climate and sustainable, reliable, and affordable sources of energy are crucial to the world’s economies. A joint commitment to invest in newer, cleaner sources of energy can create new jobs and world-class industries, clean up the environment and protect the climate, improve standards of living and enhance global security.
Germans and Americans are already promoting a variety of innovative approaches to tackling climate change and enhancing energy security. A variety of regional initiatives are being implemented in the United States, and President Obama is making strong efforts steer the US towards reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of the century. Germany has its own ambitious targets for reducing green house gas emissions, and its renewable energy sector already employs about a quarter of a million people.
Powerful motor
Working together, Germans and Americans can be a powerful motor for transatlantic and broader global cooperation on climate and energy policies. So to build on the existing transatlantic relations between Germany and the United States, the German Foreign Office and the German Environment Ministry successfully launched a ‘New Era in Transatlantic Climate and Energy Politics’ at an international conference in Berlin in September 2008.
The Transatlantic Climate Bridge Initiative works to connect all those who seek to make a difference — at the local, the state and the federal level. The aim is to support platforms and partnerships that help Americans and Germans exchange their know-how and to pave the way for joint solutions.
Successful energy and climate policy
Germany has an important story to tell about how taking action on climate change can produce economic benefits. Germany’s integrated energy and climate policy is successfully addressing its energy, climate and economic goals. It has put the country on a path of less energy dependence, it is creating a low carbon society, and it has also created a new industrial sector and new jobs. German stakeholders are interested in exchanging their experiences and best practices with their American counterparts, and the hope is that the Transatlantic Climate Bridge will facilitate this exchange throughout the United States.
Source by http://www.germany.info