Speed of US climate options have to increase five-fold, says DOE director

• The speed of environment action in the US is "completely undesirable", according to the director of the United States Department of Energy's (DOE) Loan Programme Office, Jigar Shah.

Shah stated the United States was spending around US$ 200 billion a year in climate change options, but this required to be closer to US$ 1 trillion a year to be able to reach environment targets and achieve "the objectives that the president will certainly be introducing [at the United Nations Environment Change Conference] in Glasgow".

The comments were made during a discussion with Atul Arya, IHS Markit senior vice president and also principal energy planner, in which Shah additionally discussed functioning as a driver for Wall Street financial investment, specifying this to be needed for the scale of the funds needed.

The US has "excessive money as well as inadequate projects", stated Shah. "The factor we do not have enough projects is because the only people that actually recognize how to develop projects are individuals that develop solar and also wind."

He claimed the "substantial bulk" of people were waiting on the government to "tell them what a safe strategy looks like".

"I have US$ 46 billion of authority here at the DOE Loan Programs Office. We can do whatever portion of that we can do. However eventually, we've done our job. We're a catalyst and also we can hand it off to Wall Street to do the next hundred billion," he claimed.

The DOE's Loan Programme Office has greater than US$ 40 billion in loans as well as loan guarantees available to help release utility-scale energy projects in the US.