Sir David King on COP 21 and “Mission Innovation”

Hosted by Alan Alexandroff

This podcast with Sir David King marks the Journal’s first foray into climate change and global governance issues, actors and arrangements. Sir David has been centrally involved in the creation of two potentially very important entities in the efforts to reduce CO2 emissions and move to low carbon emission strategies for states. Sir David, appointed by the Foreign Secretary as the new permanent Special Representative for Climate Change, along with a number of other notables including Sir David Attenborough, Lord Stern, Lord O’Donnell and Lord Layard launched the Global Apollo Programme in June 2015 designed to advance research on renewables and in particular new storage technologies. Through a series contacts, and some good fortune, two entities were launched just prior to the formal COP21 – Mission Innovation (MI) an alliance of states (currently 21) to advance the pace of innovation in clean energy and the Breakthrough Energy Coalition (BEC), a coalition of some 20 venture capitalists brought together by Bill Gates to accelerate commercialization and investment in cost-effective clean energy innovations. It is a compelling story from one of the principals involved in climate change governance. Please enjoy.

Leave a Reply