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Through Power Africa, launched in 2013, the U.S. Government and a coalition of more than 130 public and private sector partners are working to double access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa. At the 2014 U.S.-Africa Business Forum, President Obama pledged new funding to expand Power Africa's reach to all of sub-Saharan Africa, and announced a new aggregate goal of adding 30,000 megawatts (MW) of new, cleaner electricity and increasing electricity access by at least 60 million new connections. (...) By demonstrating that renewable power transactions are financially viable, improving the performance of utilities, changing the regulatory mind-set on renewables, and harmonizing policies to drive investment and stability, Power Africa is also playing a critical role in advancing affordable, reliable, and modern energy services and substantially increasing the share of renewable energy in sub Saharan Africa.

Since the last U.S. Trade Policy Review, the United States has achieved significant results on trade and environment matters in multiple fora, including through regional and bilateral trade initiatives.

The TPP Environment chapter includes commitments addressing a broad range of environmental challenges in the Asia-Pacific region, such as combating wildlife trafficking and illegal logging and associated trade, promoting sustainable fisheries management, and prohibiting harmful fisheries subsidies that negatively affect overfished fish stocks or support vessels engaged in illegal fishing. The TPP Agreement also liberalizes trade in environmental goods and services. The chapter also creates a framework for environmental cooperation and capacity building to help developing TPP countries meet their obligations. Obligations in the chapter are subject to the same dispute settlement procedures and remedies as obligations in other chapters of the TPP Agreement, including the availability of trade sanctions for violations. In the T-TIP negotiations, the United States is also seeking ambitious environmental commitments, including those relating to the protection and conservation of wildlife, marine fisheries, and forest resources.

The United States has continued to prioritize implementation of the FTAs currently in force. Since the last review, the United States has worked in close collaboration with Peru to advance implementation of the Annex on Forest Sector Governance under the United States-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement. As provided for in the Forest Annex, in February 2016 the United States requested the Government of Peru to verify that a shipment of timber products exported to the United States complied with applicable Peruvian laws and regulations. The United States responded to the verification findings with a set of recommended actions and intends to work with the Government of Peru to implement reforms to improve enforcement of Peruvian forestry laws. During the review period, the United States also met with officials from Central America and the Dominican Republic, Chile, Colombia, Korea, Morocco, Panama, and Singapore to discuss implementation of the environment chapters of our FTAs.

The United States and the 16 other WTO Members participating in EGA negotiations have made significant progress to develop a list of environmental technologies that will be subject to tariff elimination. At the G20 Trade Ministerial Meeting in July 2016, Ministers committed to conclude the EGA negotiations by the end of 2016, and to achieve a landing zone by the G20 Leaders' Summit in September 2016, which EGA participants succeeded in achieving. The EGA will eliminate tariffs on a broad range of environmental technologies such as wind turbines, water treatment filters, and solar water heaters, expanding on the APEC list of 54 environmental goods. In addition to the United States, Australia; Canada; China; Costa Rica; the European Union; Hong Kong, China; Iceland; Israel; Japan; Korea; New Zealand; Norway; Singapore; Switzerland; Chinese Taipei; and Turkey are participating in the negotiations.

In APEC, the United States continued to work closely with other economies to ensure full implementation of APEC Leaders' 2011 commitment to reduce tariffs on environmental goods to 5% or less by the end of 2015. To date, that commitment has resulted in the reduction of duties on hundreds of tariff lines in the Asia-Pacific region, impacting billions of dollars of trade in clean technologies. In 2016, the United States launched an initiative under APEC's Regulatory Cooperation Advancement Mechanism (ARCAM) aimed at facilitating trade and investment in sustainable materials management (SMM) solutions. This effort will catalogue APEC economy definitions of key terms (e.g. municipal solid waste, recyclable material, renewable energy) that impact trade and investment in SMM solutions as a first step towards addressing the barriers these definitions occasionally create.

In September 2016, the United States and 12 other WTO Members (Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, New Zealand, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Singapore, Switzerland, and Uruguay), announced their plans to negotiate in the WTO a first of its kind, rules-based plurilateral agreement to prohibit harmful fisheries subsidies. The United States anticipates that other conservation-minded WTO Members will join these negotiations and work towards an ambitious, high standard agreement, while at the same time working to make progress toward a multilateral agreement on fisheries subsidies in the WTO.

In July 2013, the President issued an Executive Order on Combating Wildlife Trafficking in order to enhance U.S. Government efforts to combat wildlife trafficking. The Executive Order established a Presidential Task Force to develop and implement a National Strategy for combating wildlife trafficking. The National Strategy, released in February 2014, includes a comprehensive whole of government plan to address the wildlife trafficking crisis, including by using existing and future U.S. FTAs, environmental cooperation mechanisms, and other trade-related initiatives. The United States has made substantial progress in implementing the National Strategy, including by securing enforceable commitments to combat wildlife trafficking in the TPP Environment Chapter.

In June 2014, the President issued a Presidential Memorandum on Combating Illegal Fishing and Seafood Fraud. The memorandum established a Presidential Task Force that developed a comprehensive framework to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and seafood fraud, which is outlined in the Action Plan on Combating Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing and Seafood Fraud (Action Plan), released in March 2015. The Action Plan specifically calls for the United States to seek commitments from U.S. trading partners to combat IUU fishing and eliminate harmful fisheries subsidies, such as those that go to illegal fishers. The TPP Environment Chapter includes commitments in this areas, and the United States is seeking similar commitments in the T-TIP negotiations.

Through the APEC Experts Group on Illegal Logging and Associated Trade, the United States worked with other Asia-Pacific economies on efforts to combat illegal logging and associated trade. This work included developing a definitional understanding of what constitutes illegal logging and associated trade, and establishing a reporting template for each economy to report on its laws and regulations that are within the scope of the agreed definition. Additionally, the United States is working bilaterally with China to enhance efforts to combat illegal logging and associated trade.