Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES)

Our mission is to advance strong policy and action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, promote clean energy, and strengthen resilience to climate impacts. A key objective is a national market-based program to reduce emissions cost-effectively. We believe a sound climate strategy is essential to ensure a strong, sustainable economy.

Here are some of the ways we work with policymakers and diverse stakeholders to meet our climate and energy challenges:

Business Environmental Leadership Council

Our council – including top companies in the power, manufacturing, transportation, high-tech, oil and gas, finance, and other sectors – is the largest U.S.-based group of companies devoted solely to addressing climate change. C2ES works with these business leaders to better understand the policies and technologies that will help us reach our climate goals.

Climate Innovation 2050

Climate Innovation 2050 brings together more than two dozen leading companies to examine potential pathways toward substantially decarbonizing the U.S. economy. Climate Innovation 2050 is developing a range of scenarios for reducing U.S. emissions, and will later produce decarbonization roadmaps to achieve that goal.

Partnering with Mayors

In partnership with The U.S. Conference of Mayors, C2ES is working to strengthen public-private climate cooperation in cities nationwide. The Alliance for a Sustainable Future helps mayors and business leaders work together to reduce carbon emissions, speed deployment of clean technologies, and promote sustainable development.

International Dialogue

C2ES brought together negotiators from two dozen countries to help lay the groundwork for the landmark Paris Agreement, and is now working with them to ensure it is effectively implemented. We're also advancing global efforts to phase out HFCs, a highly potent class of greenhouse gases, and to reduce aviation emissions.

Market-Based Strategies

C2ES is working with cities, states, and businesses to explore cap-and-trade, carbon taxes and other market-based strategies for cost-effective emissions reduction, with the ultimate aim of a national market-based climate program.

Strengthening Resilience

C2ES has worked with some of the world's largest companies to strengthen business resilience to extreme weather and other climate impacts. Building on that expertise, we're now bringing businesses and cities together to assess and address climate risks.

Climate Leadership Awards and Conference

C2ES co-hosts the annual Climate Leadership Conference, where hundreds of sustainability, energy, and climate professionals from the public, private and non-profit sectors get the latest on policy and business solutions. The conference features the prestigious Climate Leadership Awards.

Solutions Forum

Through public-private roundtables around the U.S., C2ES brings together business, state, and city leaders to develop practical climate solutions.

Carbon Capture Coalition

C2ES and the Great Plains Institute co-convene the Carbon Capture Coalition, a broad coalition of business, environmental, labor, and state representatives advancing technology to capture carbon emissions from factories and power plants for storage and commercial use.

C2ES is widely recognized as an influential and pragmatic voice on climate issues. We are:

-- A Trusted Source – Ranking regularly among the top environmental think tanks in the world, C2ES provides timely, impartial information and analysis on our pressing climate and energy challenges.

-- A Bridge-Builder – We bring city, state, and national policymakers together with businesses and other stakeholders to achieve common understanding and consensus solutions.

-- A Policy Innovator – We develop market-based solutions and other practical policy approaches that deliver real and lasting climate progress.

-- A Catalyst for Business Action – We work with Fortune 500 companies to strengthen business action and business support for effective climate policy.

Progress from our last reporting period:

Domestic Policy: C2ES works with communities and businesses across the U.S. to forge climate and clean energy solutions. We conducted research and produced reports and webinars on topics ranging from carbon utilization to accelerating the EV market for retailers and the trucking industry. We conducted educational campaigns on carbon pricing options, benefits of expanding markets for utilization of captured carbon dioxide. We also created near-term policy recommendations for state and federal clean energy standards. As part of our Alliance for a Sustainable Future, we published results of a sustainability questionnaire with responses from more than 180 American cities. C2ES published a “Climate Essentials” series, offering a foundation for understanding various climate impacts and solutions, covering climate resilience investments, climate science, and business risks.

In May 2019, as part of our Climate Innovation 2050 initiative, we released a report called Pathways to 2050: Scenarios for Decarbonizing the US Economy, exploring a broad array of social, economic, and technological transformations that may affect efforts to achieve carbon neutrality. Then in November 2019, we built upon this report with the release of a comprehensive U.S. policy agenda for economy-wide decarbonization, Getting to Zero: A US Climate Agenda.

International Policy: C2ES continues our workshops with climate negotiators, helping to create space for them to engage on strategies to strengthen the Paris Agreement. Ahead of the 2019 U.N. climate conference in Madrid we organized discussions among negotiators on the last remaining piece of the Paris “rulebook” – the accounting rules for international carbon markets. We released a report, Completing the Paris ‘Rulebook’: Key Article 6 Issues, providing background on the Article 6 issues and discussions; presenting a hypothetical transfer to help illustrate issues pertaining to double counting; and reviewing four key outstanding issues and options for addressing them. We were honored to once again rank as one of the world’s top environmental think tanks in the University of Pennsylvania’s Global Go To Think Tank Index.

Business Innovation: C2ES convenes business climate leaders, helping them share best practices, and encouraging businesses to engage policymakers. Our ninth annual Climate Leadership Conference and Awards brought hundreds of influential climate, energy, and sustainability professionals to Detroit to exchange ideas on policy, innovation, and business solutions. This year’s conference offered trainings in key areas to help corporate, government, and non-profit leaders better engage on climate-related issues including policy, resilience, climate risk disclosure, and carbon neutrality. We continued to support the work of the Renewable Thermal Collaborative to help companies expand the use of renewable energy to meet their thermal needs and published resources to help co