The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions works to secure a safe and stable climate by accelerating the global transition to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and a thriving, just, and resilient economy.

Who We Are

The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions—or C2ES—champions policies and technologies that foster thriving economies and shared prosperity, founded on abundant, affordable, and reliable clean energy and a safe climate. Founded in 1998 as the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, C2ES is known worldwide as a thought leader and trusted convener. We work with policymakers and leading businesses in the U.S. and around the world to forge durable, effective, and ambitious solutions to climate and energy challenges.

What sets C2ES apart is our combination of policy and analytical expertise, longstanding relationships with leading businesses, and reputation as a trusted convener. As an independent, nonpartisan organization, C2ES is solely responsible for its positions, programs, and publications.

We focus on solutions that harness the dynamism of the market economy, overcome barriers to scaling up innovative technologies, enable more effective international cooperation, and strengthen resilience to climate impacts, while ensuring the transition to a net-zero economy is equitable and empowers the marginalized and vulnerable populations most affected by climate change. See our page on organizational values and inclusion.

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How We Work

C2ES is independent and nonpartisan. Our work is informed by rigorous analysis and broad engagement with a wide range of decision makers and stakeholders, including diplomats, policymakers and government officials, Fortune 500 executives, cleantech entrepreneurs, academic researchers, and community leaders.

Policy Innovation and Leadership

We develop and advocate for innovative policy approaches that deliver real and lasting progress on climate and clean energy. We work with businesses and other partners to identify policies that are ambitious and effective – providing them with expert analysis, drawing on their understanding of real-world opportunities and constraints, and mobilizing their voices alongside ours to make the economic case for sound policy.

Business Engagement

We inform and educate business leaders, strengthen corporate action, and mobilize business support for effective climate policy. Our  Business Environmental Leadership Council, a group of over 40 primarily Fortune 500 companies, provides C2ES access to the experience and expertise of leading companies representing nearly the entire economy, including electric power, transportation, industry, tech, and finance. Our networks also include over 100 start-up and early-stage climate tech companies in our Technology Working Groups and dozens of other companies that have participated in our regional roundtables.

Trusted Convening

We bring policymakers together with businesses and other stakeholders to build common understanding and consensus around solutions. Our Regional Clean Economies and Climate Resilient Community Accelerator programs bring together leaders at the local, state, and regional levels to highlight the economic opportunities from investment in a resilient low-carbon economy and the policies needed to realize them. Our regular convenings of key international climate actors and negotiators identify common ground and constructive paths forward for international cooperation, including to support the implementation of the Paris Agreement. 

What We Do

Accelerating a Net-Zero Pathway for the United States

C2ES works with businesses and policymakers to develop and advocate for policies that cut U.S. emissions in the near term and put the country on a path to net-zero emissions by 2050.

• We mobilize business champions for ambitious climate policy. We played a key role in securing vocal support from companies for the bipartisan infrastructure law and the landmark Inflation Reduction Act, and in preserving core clean energy tax credits in the 2025 budget law.
•  We work with policymakers to design and implement economically sound policies that align clean energy and industry with market incentives, including carbon pricing and climate-aligned trade policy.
• We advance technologies needed to reach net zero. Our Technology Working Groups convene actors across the innovation ecosystem to address barriers to scaling up critical-path technologies. We are building markets for clean heat technologies through the Renewable Thermal Collaborative. Our analysis informs decision makers about technologies from advanced nuclear to carbon removal.
• We are building the durable political economy for climate action. Our Regional Clean Economies initiative convenes influential stakeholders in key states to identify and champion specific economic opportunities in the advanced energy future – and the policies and investments needed to unlock them.

Ensuring the Effectiveness of the Paris Agreement

C2ES has been deeply involved in the United Nations climate talks for some two decades, facilitating informal, closed-door, senior-level dialogue among key countries informed by expert analysis.

• The Toward 2015 dialogue, convened by C2ES in advance of the Paris climate summit, was widely credited as producing an essential blueprint for the historic Paris Agreement. Subsequent convenings contributed to the successful completion of the “Paris rulebook” for operationalizing the agreement, and helped focus the UN Global Stocktake at COP28 around high-level priorities for collective action.
• C2ES dialogues continue to support progress in the international arena on mitigation, finance, and adaptation, even as we begin to lay the groundwork for the next Global Stocktake in 2028.
• C2ES is at the center of global efforts to use high-integrity carbon markets as a means of driving climate finance at scale into emissions reduction and sustainable green growth. We helped found the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market, which is implementing a threshold quality standard for carbon credits. As the Secretariat for the Kinetic Coalition, we are creating a new market for high-quality energy transition credits to accelerate the just clean energy transition in emerging economies.

Building Climate Resilience

C2ES convenes stakeholders to help U.S. communities and businesses adapt to climate change, founded on the premise that climate resilience boosts economic competitiveness.

• Our groundbreaking 2020 report, The Resilience Factor: A Competitive Edge for Climate-Ready Cities, analyzed the implications of climate risk and resilience for local economic competitiveness.
• Our innovative Climate Resilient Communities Accelerator helps strengthen and galvanize local and regional networks on resilience and connect them to state and federal resources and policymakers.
• We are working with companies to develop guidance and metrics to make their operations – and the communities where they are located – more resilient to climate impacts.

Supporting Business Leadership

• C2ES works with leading businesses to develop tools that can help them make and meet ambitious climate commitments. We are a founding member of the innovative AIM Platform to foster investment in low-carbon supply chains, and are a leading authority on corporate net-zero transition plans.