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Bank of America Announces Cleaner Coal Partnership With the Harvard University Center for the Environment

Posted on: Wednesday, 3 December 2008, 13:39 CST

CHARLOTTE, N.C., Dec. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Bank of America today announced a new partnership with the Harvard University Center for the Environment. The collaboration, which includes a $1 million grant from the Bank of America Charitable Foundation, will support the development of a Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Action Plan. This collaboration is part of Bank of America's $20 billion, 10-year environmental initiative to address climate change through lending, investing, the creation of new products and services, operations and philanthropy.

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"Bank of America is working with the Harvard Center for the Environment to develop workable solutions to the long-term challenges of global climate change," said Anne Finucane, Chief Marketing Officer and Chair of Bank of America's Environmental Council. "Implementation of carbon capture and storage is a critical component of an environmentally sustainable economy and future. We hope this project will help expedite the development and adoption of this important technology."

A great challenge of this century is to develop secure, safe, clean, and affordable sources of energy to power world economic growth for present and future generations while protecting the environment from the impacts of global climate change. To address this challenge, the Harvard University Center for the Environment is leading the Climate Solutions Program -- an interdisciplinary faculty collaboration focusing its broad and deep capabilities on the energy-climate challenge. Research teams convened under this program are working together to find realistic paths to what climate scientists have identified as the ultimate policy goal: an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century.

Bank of America's grant will support one important component of the broader Climate Solutions Program -- a project to develop a CCS Action Plan. While carbon capture and storage may be the cornerstone of a future "climate solution," there are numerous obstacles and unanswered questions in the way of any strategy for broad implementation including: how CCS systems will be financed and to what extent state and federal government should be involved; how long it will take for these systems to come on line; which current plants should be retrofitted and what new infrastructure investments -- e.g., pipelines, transport systems -- will be required; and what key regulatory regimes need to be developed to govern these activities.

The CCS Action Plan brings together experts from across Harvard University with environmental leaders from industry, government and the nonprofit community to address the economic, policy, technology and legal implications of CCS. In addition to providing support, Bank of America will be providing an intellectual contribution as a key participant in this stakeholder group. Together, the team will assess scenarios for the broad implementation of CCS systems, including the development of blueprints for various pathways to wide-scale deployment. Results of the project will include a series of publications that recommend specific policy alternatives. Work on this project is already underway.

"Bank of America's support will allow us to bring together expertise from across many disciplines -- including engineering, geology, economics, business, law, and government -- to develop a plan for implementation of CCS at the scale needed to address our greenhouse gas reduction goals," said Daniel Schrag, PhD, Director, Harvard University Center for the Environment. "Alongside energy efficiency and the expanded use of renewable energy, carbon capture and storage will be an essential component of any national and international strategy to protect the world from the most dangerous consequences of global climate change."

The grant will also support the continuation of three successful environmental speaker series: "The Future of Energy," "Biodiversity, Ecology and Global Change," and "Green Conversations." These speaker series engage the Harvard community and the public in a discussion of different choices and strategies in confronting energy and environmental challenges.

Bank of America's environmental initiatives provide critical financing to encourage the development of environmentally sustainable products and technologies; accelerate the deployment of existing technologies; and increase energy efficiency. Results under these initiatives include investments in solar and other renewable energy efforts at schools, municipalities and businesses, and financing the preservation of redwood forests, among other efforts. At the same time, the company has policies in place to discourage financing projects that would destroy primary moist tropical rainforests, certain endangered forests or companies involved in illegal logging.

For more information about Bank of America's environmental commitment, please visit www.bankofamerica.com/environment.

Bank of America Corporate Philanthropy

Building on a long-standing tradition of investing in the communities it serves, Bank of America will embark in 2009 on a new, ten-year goal to donate $2 billion to nonprofit organizations engaged in improving the health and vitality of their neighborhoods. Funded by Bank of America, the Bank of America Charitable Foundation gave more than $200 million in 2007, making the bank the most generous financial institution in the world and the second largest donor of all U.S. corporations in cash contributions. Bank of America approaches giving through a national strategy called "neighborhood excellence" under which it works with local leaders to identify and meet the most pressing needs of individual communities. Through Team Bank of America, bank associate volunteers contributed more than 650,000 hours in 2007 to enhance the quality of life in their communities nationwide. For more information about Bank of America Corporate Philanthropy, please visit www.bankofamerica.com/foundation.

Harvard University Center for the Environment

The Harvard University Center for the Environment (HUCE) encourages research and education about the environment and its many interactions with human society. The Center draws its strength from faculty members and students across the University who make up a remarkable intellectual community of scholars, researchers, and teachers of diverse fields including chemistry, earth and planetary sciences, engineering and applied sciences, biology, public health and medicine, government, business, economics, religion, and the law. The most pressing problems facing our natural environment are complex, often requiring collaborative investigation by scholars versed in different disciplines. By connecting scholars and practitioners from different disciplines, the Center for the Environment seeks to raise the quality of environmental research at Harvard and beyond.

SOURCE Bank of America

Source: PR Newswire

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