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TheWhite House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy was a government entity in the United States created in 2008 byPresidentBarack Obama by Executive Order. It existed for over two years and was combined with another presidential office in April 2011. The office was created to coordinate administrationpolicy on energy andglobal warming. Under theBiden administration, it has been succeeded by both theOffice of Domestic Climate Policy and theOffice on Clean Energy Innovation and Implementation.
The office was created in December 2008. Its first (and only) director wasCarol Browner, who wasAdministrator of the Environmental Protection Agency for the eight years of theBill Clinton administration.[1]
President Obama launched theMajor Economies Forum on Energy and Climate Change to facilitate candid dialogue among key developed and developing countries regarding efforts to advance clean energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For the new forum, President Obama invited the leaders of 16 major economies and theSecretary General of theUnited Nations to designate representatives to participate in a preparatory session at theU.S. Department of State that occurred on April 27–28 inWashington, D.C. This and other preparatory sessions culminated in a 17-nationMEF meeting, as part of the35th G8 summit which Italian Prime MinisterSilvio Berlusconi agreed to host inLa Maddalena, Italy, in July 2009.[2] The G8 summit was subsequently moved toL'Aquila, Italy, as part of an attempt to redistribute disaster funds after the2009 L'Aquila earthquake.[3] The forum took place on July 9, 2009.
In April 2011, it was reported that Congress would no longer fund the office in the 2011 budget.[4] On March 2, 2011, the White House announced that theclimate and energy work done by the office would be transferred to theDomestic Policy Council, thereby eliminating it as an office within theWhite House Office.[5] It was succeeded in 2021 by theWhite House Office of Domestic Climate Policy, headed by the White House National Climate Advisor.
