Officials with 13 major companies, among them the parent company of MidAmerican Energy Co., will join Obama administration officials at the White House today to launch what they call the “American Business Act on Climate Pledge,” USA Today reported.

“Each company is announcing significant new pledges to reduce their emissions, increase low-carbon investments, deploy more clean energy, and take other actions to build more sustainable businesses and tackle climate change,” the White House said in a statement.  

The Obama administration hopes these commitments give it momentum as officials head to Paris later this year for talks on a global climate change agreement.

The 13 companies are Alcoa, Apple, Bank of America, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, Cargill, Coca-Cola, General Motors, Goldman Sachs, Google, Microsoft, PepsiCo, UPS and Walmart.

Greg Abel, Berkshire Hathaway Energy chairman, president and CEO, and Cathy Woollums, senior vice president,for environmental services and chief environmental counsel, are representing Berkshire Hathaway Energy at the White House meeting, which is being led by Secretary of State John Kerry.

Berkshire Hathaway Energy’s American Business Act on Climate Pledge includes MidAmerican Energy’s plan to pursue construction of 552 megawatts of additional wind generation in Iowa, which would increase the utility’s generating portfolio by 2017 to more than 4,000 megawatts of renewable generation capacity, which, for comparison purposes, could serve up to 57 percent of its retail energy load.  

Obama’s climate change plan “will cut nearly 6 billion tons of carbon pollution through 2030, an amount equivalent to taking all the cars in the United States off the road for more than four years,” the White House said.