With the crucial climate change summit upcoming in Cancun in Mexico, US special envoy Todd Stern has emphasised on the enhanced cooperation between American and India on the issue.
"The US and India are natural partners and have great future of cooperation ahead of us. We both have a large supply of human capital and talent. We both are viewed with built in entrepreneurial spirit. I think, quite importantly, with respect to the natural cooperation that we have between the US and India, we are both robust among democracies," Stern said.
"Already we are engaged in very constructive efforts with regard to technology at the bilateral level. We also have potential at the multilateral level– to build on the progress we made last year at Copenhagen," Stern said in his remarks at the US-India Energy Partnership Summit 2010 organised by The Energy and Resources Institute, North America, the Yale University and US-India Business Council.
One notable example of Indo-US bilateral cooperation clean energy is the new US-India partnership to advance clean energy, which was launched last year in November during the Washington visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
"The US has now committed $50 million of that partnership over the first five years," he said.
"The two countries are now working in a number of areas. One of them being our efforts to set up a joint clean energy research center. That effort is led by the Department of Energy of the US," he said.
Stern said the two countries can achieve significant emissions reductions from the widespread deployment of existing technology. But there is also need to develop the next generation of technology.
Rajendra K Pachauri, the Director-General of TERI and Chairman, IPCC, said the conference this year acquires greater significance because US President Barack Obama would be traveling to India.
"This has been a very productive exercise, where we looked at those technologies where there is shared interest in creating overall energy security," he said.
