Two coworkers walking and discussing their tasks while surrounded by solar panels.
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Ten years ago this month, world leaders gathered in Paris and did something unprecedented in modern diplomacy: they created a shared framework for addressing climate change that accelerated a global economic transformation. A decade later, the results are unmistakable.
The Paris Agreement has spurred government action, unlocked historic investment, and promoted thousands of companies to align their strategies to manage climate risk. The transition to a clean economy is now delivering affordability, growth, innovation, and competitiveness around the world.
Record Clean Energy Growth
Here in the U.S. private sector progress is visible. Just last year, the U.S. generated a record amount of electricity from solar and wind — more than triple the amount in 2015. These clean energy resources, along with the battery storage to preserve that power, have rapidly become both the least expensive and the quickest to build energy sources.
America’s clean energy boom is also creating jobs. Last year, clean energy jobs in the U.S. expanded three times faster than the rest of the nation’s workforce, adding almost 100,000 new jobs and bringing the total number of workers in the sector to 3.56 million.
This progress isn’t without headwinds given the current federal policy environment. The 2025 big tax and spending bill curtailed tax credits that had been driving hundreds of billions of private dollars into clean technologies. Combined with a series of executive actions rolling back climate and energy programs, the policy landscape is working against continued clean energy growth.
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Climate Action Is An Economic Opportunity, Not A Cost
Still, momentum continues. Despite the dismantling of federal policies, U.S. wind and solar are expected to continue to scale through 2030, and clean tech and climate solutions are now the second fastest growing sector globally.
These numbers underscore a simple truth: climate action is not an economic cost but an economic opportunity.
Businesses recognized that early. They were champions of the Paris Agreement back in 2015 because they saw the writing on the wall. They understood that climate risk is business risk, and that a collective global goal would accelerate innovation and economic prosperity. Hundreds of investors and companies across sectors publicly backed the agreement in 2015, and many have doubled down on their support since.
Corporate climate targets aligned with science-based goals have become mainstream. Supply chains are becoming more resilient. Corporate procurement of clean energy has surged. In fact, a recent analysis of 6,500 companies found that 84% of businesses are standing by their climate commitments, and corporate procurement of clean energy has grown eightfold since 2017, setting a record in 2024.
Companies Support Affordable, Clean Power
Just as importantly, leading businesses have advocated—consistently and visibly—for policies to keep the U.S. competitive in key 21st-century industries. They’ve backed federal incentives that spur American manufacturing, modernize electric grids, and improve permitting processes to unlock new energy infrastructure, meet rising energy demand, and bring down costs.
And despite the talk that companies are unwilling to speak out in the current environment, they continue to. Just this week, dozens of leading U.S. companies, such as CleanCapital, HASI, and Schneider Electric, are on Capitol Hill delivering the business case to Congress that removing barriers to clean energy deployment is one of the fastest ways to tame soaring electricity costs.
Businesses have also been steadfast in supporting the Paris Agreement itself. When the federal government moved to withdraw, business leaders were among the first to reaffirm their commitment to its goals. Hundreds have joined America Is All In—the coalition of nearly 5,000 investors, companies, institutions, cities, states, and tribes driving U.S. climate progress from the ground up.
Paris Spurred Today’s Momentum
At COP30, leaders from business, society, and government showed up in full force with a critical message: the U.S. is still in. America has always advanced climate action from the ground up, through a combination of city, state, federal, corporate, and community leadership.
This all-of-society approach is not incidental to the Paris Agreement—it is central to it. The agreement works because it empowers action at every level of the economy. Even when federal leadership wavers, progress continues.
The results of the last decade do not erase the reality that global emissions are still too high, and climate impacts are intensifying. But they do affirm that climate action and economic growth are not in conflict. The next ten years will determine whether we build on this momentum.
Business leaders have made it clear that maintaining policy certainty with responsible climate and energy policies is vital for economic stability, innovation, and growth. The challenge now is to turn the progress of the past decade into the foundation for the next. Businesses helped bring us this far, and their leadership will be decisive in the years ahead.