Climate change strategy sessions move from Paris to San Francisco

Last year, global efforts on climate change focused on Paris, where representatives from 195 countries hammered out a landmark agreement to limit warming.

“I am very confident we are getting our act together as a state, as a country, as a world,” said Tom Steyer, a climate activist and former hedge fund manager who is scheduled to speak at the event.

[...] yet last week, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, vowed to pull out of the agreement if elected.

Energy ministers will tour such companies as Tesla Motors and receive an update from Google on self-driving cars.

“This event really helps put ourselves on the map as what we’d like to be, which is the global headquarters of the clean-energy revolution,” said John Grubb, chief operating officer of the Bay Area Council, a business-oriented public policy group that helped organize the week’s activities.

While the ministerial focuses on rolling out clean technologies already available, delegates will also take part in meetings of the Mission Innovation effort launched by President Obama last year.

Mission Innovation member countries pledge to double their spending on clean energy research and development over five years, hoping to find emission-cutting technologies.

In Union Square, 95 clean-tech companies from 18 countries — making everything from efficient cooling systems to lightweight, 3-D-printed cars — will showcase their wares under an immense tent that will be open to the public (with a $10 cover charge at the door).

The entrepreneurs there will also get face time with the energy ministers themselves, such as Piyush Goyal, the Indian government’s point man on power and new energy technologies.

Brown has aggressively pushed the idea of “subnational” action on global warming, courting city, state and provincial officials worldwide to sign his “Under 2 MOU” for reining in emissions.