The global community is hard at work constructing an international policy framework to address climate change by setting global limits on greenhouse gas emissions and creating markets and mechanisms that will incentivize major emissions reductions in the most economically efficient manner. This is critically important work. At the same time, scientists around the world are conducting research and development into solutions that enable us to take action on climate. Innovation drives the development of technologies that help us mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to changes in our climate.

Private companies and the public sector both invest tremendous amounts of resources in innovation to address a wide range of scientific and technological challenges. Climate change presents one of the most complex and far-reaching challenges that we have faced to date. Our growing understanding of the global climate system - and the many uncertainties inherent in how this system functions – compels many to call for increasingly stringent and prompt action to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and prepare for inevitable changes to our climate. This urgent call for climate mitigation and adaptation solutions will require new technologies to be developed, demonstrated, and brought to large-scale deployment faster than has often been the case.

A well-constructed climate policy that creates a carbon price and drives demand for products and technologies that enable a low-carbon economy helps to create an incentive to invest in innovation around climate solutions. But given the magnitude of the challenge – many say an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is required by 2050 - and the immediate need to begin to slow, stop, and then reverse emissions in order to reach our long-term goals, a carbon price will not be enough to spur needed investment in technology innovation. We will need to do more to accelerate research and development to ensure that the technology solutions are available when we need them.

We must encourage out of the box thinking that allows for approaching mitigation and adaptation problems in new ways, while continuing to support longstanding research on projects and technologies that we believe present important solutions. Cost sharing between public and private entities, particularly to buy down the risk curve in the early, high-risk stages of research and development will be important. We also must work together as a global community to structure policy and legal frameworks such that they ensure diffusion of key low-carbon technologies in developed and developing countries while maintaining intellectual property rights. Global investment in the education of tomorrow's scientists and engineers is also critical. Climate change is a long-term challenge, and the need for creative, innovative minds to develop technology solutions to address climate change will only increase over time.

Motivated by growing concern about what climate change means to our planet, the world is coming together to craft solutions. Policy negotiations have been underway at the international, regional, and national levels for a number of years, indeed in some regions - like the E.U. - we have a cap-and-trade system that is up and running. I hope that we are getting closer to arriving at an elegant and effective international policy construct that includes mechanisms to facilitate robust innovation and technology development programs worldwide.