Arati Prabhakar, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Brenda Mallory, Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality; and National Climate Advisor
Americans are already feeling the severe and disruptive effects of climate change all over the nation: record-breaking heat waves in American cities and towns, millions of acres being burned by wildfires in the West, and dangerous storms like Hurricane Beryl that disrupt power supplies and endanger lives. The US has seen fifteen separate billion-dollar climate disasters in the last six months alone.
Today, the release of the groundbreaking Climate Resilience Game Changers Assessment by the Biden-Harris Administration is helping to further stimulate investment and innovation in the US. The Climate Resilience Game Changers Assessment identifies 28 essential technologies, management strategies, institutional and financial tools that can drive transformative positive impacts on our country’s climate resilience while generating well-paying jobs, enhancing community well-being, and advancing environmental justice. This builds on the Biden-Harris Administration’s Net-Zero Game Changers Initiative, which is accelerating advancements in key decarbonisation technologies.
As the National Climate Resilience Framework points out, creating and using new and improved instruments in our country’s toolbox to combat climate-related challenges is necessary to make us a climate-resilient nation. The Climate Resilience Game Changers Assessment showcases cutting-edge methods, techniques, and technologies that have the potential to become these vital resources with more study, funding, and development. Advanced grid control systems for the energy sector, next-generation desalination and recycling technologies for the country’s water supply, and Resilience Hubs that enhance public safety and increase community health are just a few of these revolutionary innovations. New methods for maximising the resilience advantages of natural systems are also highlighted in the Game Changers Assessment, along with advancements like next-generation remote sensing, analytics, and forecasting technologies that can be helpful in a variety of industries.
The Biden-Harris Administration’s recent unprecedented investments and efforts in climate resilience innovation are built upon by the Game Changers Assessment, which includes:
Supporting advanced technologies and practices in agriculture and land conservation. The Inflation Reduction Act will provide $90 million to the Department of Agriculture this week for over 50 projects aimed at creating innovative methods, instruments, and technologies to promote the conservation of natural resources on private lands. These projects will include a variety of initiatives promoting resilience and adaptation. Moreover, a $20 million investment was made earlier this week by the Department of Agriculture, the Department of the Interior, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to allow the use of NOAA’s satellite program to quickly detect and report wildfire beginnings.
Investing in innovation to protect our nation’s reservoirs, rivers, lakes, and ocean. In an effort to promote innovation in marine research and technology, NOAA last month announced the awarding of more than $16 million. These awards included investments in vital climate adaptation technologies that tackle ocean acidification and improve ocean and marine biodiversity monitoring. on June, NOAA also revealed plans to invest close to $5 million on research and labs that enhance Western drought monitoring and forecasting. The Department of the Interior said in May that $179 million will be allocated to creative drought resilience initiatives, such as groundwater recharge and water recycling, which will provide hundreds of thousands of people with their average yearly water needs. These investments are a portion of the tens of billions of dollars that the Biden-Harris Administration’s Investing in America Agenda will make over the course of five years to revitalise our country’s water resources.
Building a reliable, next-generation grid. The Biden-Harris Administration is allocating over $10 billion to innovative and resilient grid infrastructure projects that will improve our system’s resilience to extreme weather events and climate change. These projects will be supported nationwide. These include hundreds of millions of dollars to construct a new smart grid in rural Georgia; install sophisticated battery, microgrid, and grid management technologies in Wisconsin; and fortify vital grid infrastructure against wildfire hazards in Hawaii. By making these investments, the likelihood of weather-related power outages will decrease and a new workforce of innovators will be produced.
Accelerating the climate resilience innovation ecosystem. New test beds, accelerators, and hubs are being established by the Biden-Harris administration to encourage investment in innovation nationwide. These innovation pipelines—which are supported by the President’s Investing in America Agenda—include the Regional Innovation and Technology Hubs of the Economic Development Administration (EDA), the Ocean-Based Climate Resilience Accelerators of NOAA, and the ten Regional Innovation Engines of the National Science Foundation. For instance, in Florida, the Miami Dade County Office of Innovation and Economic Development and EDA’s new ClimateReady Tech Hub will collaborate to scale cutting-edge, low-emission concrete solutions that safeguard low-lying areas. Water scarcity, wildfires, and other extreme weather events will be anticipated, predicted, and measured in Colorado and Wyoming thanks to the work of a new National Science Foundation Climate Resilience Engine that will develop and implement improved sensing, monitoring, and prediction analytics. These proactive investments will guarantee that American research, design, and manufacturing will be at the forefront of climate technologies, industries, and supply chains in the next century.
Setting the stage for future innovation and progress. The US is a global leader in innovative science, research, and creativity that is changing the game. In order to further build on this legacy, the Climate Resilience Game Changers Assessment collaborates with the federal government to bring innovations that have the potential to significantly increase our country’s resilience to the effects of climate change to the attention of public, private, philanthropic, and scientific institutions in America. Through careful investigation, creation, and implementation of the Climate Resilience Game Changers together with other essential climate investments, we can keep constructing a more robust, secure, and climate-resilient country.
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