On November 4 2016, the Paris Agreement entered into force. To date, 190 countries have submitted 164 nationally determined contributions (NDCs) outlining their own goals and methods to reduce emissions in common effort to limit global temperature increases this century.

The combined challenges of energy access and climate change present major needs for clean energy investment. The Paris Agreement and United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, negotiated in 2015, represented an inflection point for moving from talk to action in order to address two of the world’s most important challenges.

Two years since the negotiation of the Paris Agreement, the global community faces significant challenges in mobilizing the climate investment required to meet the Paris Agreement shared goal of limiting global warming to, at most, two degrees Celsius and to adapt to climate impacts.

In the past few decades, China has experienced rapid growth in coal power, leading to the country’s increased CO2 emissions, which reached 8.25 billion tons in 2012 (IEA).