Tackling Climate Change

2006 was a year of innovations and important progress to tackle climate change, the environmental challenge of our time. The Hewlett Foundation works closely with the Energy Foundation to make grants in this area.
Energy Foundation grant recipients helped seven Northeastern states create the first regional carbon emissions trading program for utilities, while other grantees assisted California in adopting laws that will reduce greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2020. Still others won a federal lawsuit that will require the U.S. Department of Energy to upgrade energy use standards for twenty-two household appliances.
In China, where blistering economic growth threatens similarly blistering environmental problems, other Hewlett and Energy Foundation grantees worked with the Chinese government to create agreements with the country’s 1,000 largest businesses to cut energy use by 20 percent, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 2,424 million tons by 2010.


