The Transatlantic Climate Bridge is a climate partnership between Germany and the United States.
The partnership was first proposed by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in an April 2008 lecture at Harvard University. He believed that climate policy was the core of transatlantic matters. On 29 September 2008, he and German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, "Together with the United States, we can make the technological breakthroughs required and successfully negotiate a follow-up treaty to the Kyoto Protocol. Only if we work closely with our partners on the other side of the Atlantic will we succeed in convincing emerging countries such as China, India and Brazil, as well as Russia, to opt for a sustainable growth model that spares the climate." The next day, the climate bridge was launched by Germany at a conference at the German Foreign Office in Berlin, where about 300 American, Canadian, and German representatives invited by Steinmeier and Gabriel convened. There, they "sought to identify innovative solutions for tackling climate change".
In the US, the initiative was launched on 16 December in Washington, D.C., at the invitation of German Ambassador to the US Klaus Scharioth. The partnership entails cooperation between US and German officials in matters of confronting climate change. It aims to develop novel ways to reduce emissions and to improve energy efficiency.