During FY 2014, the Department of Commerce (DOC) made good progress in helping U.S. businesses to adapt and prosper by developing environmental and climate informed solutions. The lack of a strong, predictable domestic market continues to hinder the global competitiveness of U.S. clean energy companies; in addition, like U.S. environmental technologies firms, their global market share has been eroded by lower cost suppliers abroad. Trade missions and information portals (e.g. www.export.gov/reee and www.export.gov/envirotech) helped support businesses. New software was made publicly available for architects and businesses to use in assessing sustainable building designs (birdscom.nist.gov), and a robust inter-bureau (ESA, ITA, NIST, NOAA) dialogue to frame future conversations with businesses around natural capital values was begun.
ITA and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched the Environmental Solutions Toolkit to allow U.S. companies to showcase their technologies to foreign buyers who can also access EPA’s work on any mobile platform.
ITA completed two Top Export Market Studies (Renewable Energy and Environmental Technologies) to provide additional data on foreign markets to U.S. firms seeking to export.
NIST successfully completed the design and review phase of Building Industry Reporting and Design for Sustainability, otherwise known as BIRDS. This new science-based online software tool was created by NIST to enable building professionals and other users to assess three major determinants of building stability: energy, environmental, and cost performance. The tool was publicly deployed in early October 2014.
ESA and NOAA developed a concept paper on how to implement a series of business roundtables focused on engaging industry in valuing natural capital. The bureaus identified a cluster mapping approach for identifying target industries to engage in the roundtables.
FY2015 Q1-Q4 – ITA will work to leverage staff expertise to ensure that environmental and clean energy businesses are included as part of trade missions in related infrastructure areas.