On mission in the United States

Our Secretary-General Nicholas Dunlop recently accompanied our Latin America and China Directors, Dr Sergio Missana and Ms Geng Dan, on mission to the United States with a series of meetings with senior policymakers to discuss our work and propose joint action on climate and energy.

In New York, Mr Dunlop gave a presentation at the launch of a new book on the importance of large-scale grids for renewable energy - Global Energy Interconnection, by Mr Liu Zhenya, the Chairman of the State Grid Corporation of China. During the event, which was attended by senior Chinese and American energy experts as well as UN officials and representatives of the US government, Mr Liu pledged to support the work of the Climate Parliament in launching a "Green Grid Alliance" of countries commited to promoting large-scale renewable energy interconnections.

In Washington, the Climate Parliament delegation had meetings with senior officials at the State Department (including Karen Florini, deputy climate negotiator for the US), USAID (Allen Eisendrath, head of their Global Climate Office), and the Department of Energy (Jonathan Pershing, former chief US climate negotiator under the Clinton and Bush administrations, now a senior adviser to the Secretary of Energy.) The next step arising from our State Department meeting will be a conference call with the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) in Colorado. Further meetings were held at the UN Foundation and at ACORE, the main renewable energy industry body in Washington.