"[T]oday, we’re announcing Mission Innovation," Obama stated on Monday. "[T]he 20 participating nations, representing more than 80 percent of global clean energy innovation dollars, we’re going to seek to double our R&D [research and development] budget over the next five years."
The program will start with 28 leading private investors from all over the world who are committing to invest unprecedented resources to create new generating systems because existing technologies were not sufficient to create enough clean energy, Obama acknowledged.
"[W]e don’t yet know exactly what’s going to work best… by taking this approach on a global scale… Mission Innovation will help deliver affordable clean energy and new jobs and opportunities to people around the world for decades to come," he said.
However, Obama’s clean energy challenges face major and growing opposition within the United States. On October 22, West Virginia and 22 other US states launched a legal action against the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) seeking to block Obama’s domestic Clean Power Plan.