Biden to put US to work on climate change
US president Joe Biden marked Earth Day, April 22, by expanding US ambitions to cut fossil fuel emissions, calling on the world’s major economies at his Leader's Summit on Climate to get to work.
On the effort to combat climate change, the US president touted his proposed trillion-dollar infrastructure spending plan as part of the solution. From laying new electricity lines to building up the hydrogen fuel sector, the energy transition can be a job creator, he said.
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The US economy, the president said, can cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by the end of this decade by embracing the opportunities the clean energy movement presents.
“But the truth is, the United States represents less than 15% of the world’s emissions,” he said. “No nation can solve this crisis on its own.”
The commitments, on top of the US return to the Paris climate agreement that marked Biden’s first day in office, put the US economy back in line with the global effort to arrest climate change, ending four years of propping up the fossil fuels industry by former president Donald Trump.
Biden’s Earth Day proclamation was met with widespread praise, even in the US fossil fuels industry. The American Petroleum Institute, an oil and gas lobby group that introduced its own proposals on the energy transition, said it was committed to addressing climate-related risks from the energy sector, but fretted over the prospects of excessive restrictions.
“As the administration reviews the impacts of climate change on the financial sector, any future regulatory actions must be workable for all industries, support access to capital for all sectors, and avoid a one-size-fits-all, prescriptive approach that would only stifle the innovative work underway in the private sector to manage climate-related risks and opportunities,” API vice president for corporate policy Stephen Comstock said.
Along with many in the oil and gas sector, the API has softened its stance on climate policy, adding it advocated for congressional funding to support research into low-carbon technologies ranging from carbon storage to hydrogen fuel development.
From Capitol Hill, Frank Pallone, a Democratic senator representing New Jersey and the chairman of the Senate energy and commerce committee, said that after four years of ignorance about the reality of climate change from the previous administration, there is no time to waste.
“We cannot stand idly by as the rest of the world transitions to clean energy and our workers get left behind. We will not watch from the sidelines as the climate crisis wreaks havoc on Americans’ health and homes,” he said. “The time for climate action is now.”
The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) in its monthly report for April estimated that energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide declined last year by 11% from 2019 levels. Most of that decline was the result of demand destruction brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.
As the economy recovers this year, the EIA expects CO2 emissions to increase by 5% from 2020 levels, but slow to a 2% increase relative to last year by 2022.