U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, the Bezos Earth Fund, and the Rockefeller Foundation have announced a process to design an Energy Transition Accelerator (ETA) with the potential to catalyze private capital for a transition to clean energy in emerging and developing economies.

Over the next year, the nonprofit partners and the U.S. State Department will engage with developing countries, political and thought leaders, climate champions, and the world’s foremost experts to design the ETA. In addition, the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), the Voluntary Carbon Markets Initiative (VCMI), the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol of the World Resources Institute will help ensure broad alignment with best practice environmental and carbon market standards. Any revenue eventually raised through the ETA would supplement other sources mobilized by governments, donors, and multilateral and private financial institutions to develop countries’ energy transition.

According to the Rockefeller Foundation, burning fossil fuels for power generation in emerging and developing economies accounted for 9.8 billion tons of CO₂ emissions in 2020, double the annual emissions of the United States. Without sufficient investment to reduce these emissions, it will be impossible to prevent the worst of the climate crisis. A just energy transition offers the opportunity to connect billions of people to reliable, renewable electricity, many for the first time. 

“Humanity is already being battered by climate change—at 3 degrees of warming, life for too many people will be not only hot but harsher, poorer and more fragile,” said Rockefeller Foundation president Rajiv J. Shah. “To avoid that fate, the world must come together in new ways and behind new innovations like the ETA, which could, for the first time, unlock the true potential of carbon markets to scale resources needed for clean energy transitions. Our teams will work in the year ahead to answer the hard questions required to reimagine what’s possible.”

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