The agreement calls for an elevation of these commitments every 5 years, a system to track progress, financing for poor countries to expand clean energy and help making vulnerable regions more resilient.
Mr. Cooper said the industry's equanimity was based, at least partially, on the supportive cushion provided by loan guarantees and work-in-progress financing.
AmerenUE, the Missouri utility, suspended in April 2009 plans to build a $6 billion, 1,600-megawatt reactor at its Callaway County nuclear site, after trying unsuccessfully to get the State Legislature to repeal a longstanding ban on work-in-progress financing.
Hamilton was clearly a blue-stater, and his advocacy of racial progress, sound finance and foreign policy realism have a lot more resonance at the moment on the Democratic side of the aisle.
But despite this remarkable progress, public finance is the last meaningful reform left undone.
An Adani spokesman said: "The company continues to progress the financing arrangements for its projects in Australia.
Instead of the vague mandate of "adequate yearly progress," federal financing should be conditioned on truth in advertising — on reliably describing achievement (or lack thereof) and spending.
Yes, economic conditions are hindering progress, yes, financing and valuation is still a problem and yes, sustainability still suffers from an image as a "bolt-on" issue.
At the state level, the industry has also pressed the case for "construction work in progress," a financing system that requires electricity users to pay for the cost of new reactors during their construction and sometimes before construction starts.
Instead it substituted fuzzier targets, like progress on financing affordable housing.
