US companies to announce $140 billion in new investments to decrease their

The move supports the climate change agreement to be discussed in Paris later this year.

The company also said it will reduce its energy usage by 20 per cent from its 2010 levels by 2020, and increase reporting of its yields, water usage and greenhouse gas emissions in its food supply chains.

Participating companies are pledging to take specific, quantifiable steps to reduce emissions, increase low-carbon investments, use and build more clean energy, and deploy cleaner vehicles, among other actions. Along those lines, it committed to tripling its renewable energy purchases by 2025. Ultimately, the company aims to make all its manufacturing sites zero-waste, with 150 landfill-free facilities expected to be online by 2020.

“As the world looks toward global climate negotiations in Paris this December, American leadership at all levels will be essential”, the White House said in a fact sheet detailing the announcement. Last December, more than 360 members of Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2) – including executives from major companies like Google, Apple, Oracle and Facebook – signed a letter in support of the Obama Administration’s soon-to-be-finalized Clean Power Plan, perhaps the most important piece of climate policy in recent history.

The companies behind the pledge are not limited to tech firms, however.

The Wall Street Journal reported the commitments earlier.

The companies have also stated to collectively produce 1,600 megawatts of electricity from renewable resources. Financial institutions like Goldman Sachs and Bank of America have committed to financing billions of dollars in renewable energy plants.

Berkshire Hathaway Energy has already invested more than $15 billion in renewable energy generation projects that are under construction and in operation through 2014, and has pledged to invest up to an additional $15 billion going forward.

Because wind and solar are intermittent sources of power (the sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow), incorporating them into the standard electrical grid has its challenges.

The Obama administration is pushing hard to complete a new worldwide agreement to curb global warming after the prior summit in Copenhagen in 2009 ended in failure. The White House said in a statement that it expects to announce a second round of similar pledges later this fall from additional companies. And Secretary of State John Kerry will hold a forum at the State Department in October to highlight U.S. actions on climate investments and solutions.

When IKEA made a climate pledge deemed “bigger than Sweden’s,” I got pretty excited.