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WASHINGTON – The strongest piece of President Biden’s climate agenda – his program to rapidly replace the nation’s coal and gas-fired power plants with wind, solar and nuclear power – will likely be removed from the massive budget bill pending in Congress. Congressmen and lobbyists are familiar with the issue.
Democratic Senator Joe Manchin III from coal-rich West Virginia, whose votes were crucial to the bill’s adoption, told the White House that he strongly opposes the clean electricity program, according to three of those people. As a result, White House staffers are now rewriting legislation without this climate provision and trying to put together a mix of other policies that could also reduce emissions.
A spokesperson for the Biden administration declined to comment, and Mr Manchin’s spokesperson did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
The $150 billion clean electricity program is the man behind Mr. Biden’s ambitious climate agenda. It will reward utilities that switch from burning fossil fuels to renewable energy sources and punish those that don’t.
Experts said the policy will significantly reduce greenhouse gases warming the planet over the next decade, making it the strongest climate change policy ever enacted by the United States.
Democrats hoped to incorporate this into the broader budget bill. expand the social safety netThey plan to strengthen their muscles under a rapid process known as compromise that would allow them to pass without any Republican vote. The party is still trying to figure out how to pass the budget bill along with a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill.
For weeks, Democratic leaders have promised that strong climate change provisions—especially the clean electricity program—will be at the center of the pack. Progressive Democrats: “No climate, no deal!” chanted slogans.
Mr Manchin, personal financial ties He had originally intended to write to the coal industry the details of the program as chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Mr. Manchin was considering a clean electricity program that would reward companies that switch from coal to natural gas, which is less polluting but can still emit carbon dioxide and leach another greenhouse gas, methane. Mr. Manchin’s home state, West Virginia, is one of the nation’s largest producers of coal and gas.
But in recent days, Mr. Manchin has expressed to the administration that he is now completely against a clean electricity program, people familiar with the controversy said.
As a result, White House staff are scrambling to calculate the emissions impact of other climate measures on the bill, including tax incentives for renewable energy companies and tax credits for consumers who buy electric vehicles. Unlike a clean electricity program, tax incentives tend to expire after a certain period of time and a more durable strategy does not have the market-changing power.
During a year of record and deadly droughts, wildfires, storms and floods that scientists say is exacerbated by climate change, Mr. Biden has sought to introduce policies across the federal government to significantly reduce the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions (largely carbon dioxide and methane). He promised the rest of the world that the United States would reduce its emissions by 50 percent from 2005 levels by 2030.
In two weeks, Mr. Biden will face other world leaders at a major United Nations climate change conference in Glasgow, Scotland, where he hopes to cite the clean electricity program as proof of the US as the world’s largest historic planetary emitter. He was serious about warming pollution, reducing its emissions and leading a global effort to combat climate change.
The rest of the world remains deeply wary of the United States’ commitment to combating global warming, after four years in which former President Donald J. Trump openly mocked climate change science and enacted policies that encouraged greater drilling and burning of fossil fuels. .
Mr. Biden had hoped that legislation would be enacted that would clean up the country’s energy sector, which produces about a quarter of its greenhouse gases. Regardless of who occupied the White House, he wanted a program that would have long-lasting effects after leaving office.
At least for now, there are other climate provisions in the bill, including about $300 billion and $32 billion in taxes to expand existing tax credits for utilities, businesses, and homeowners that use or generate electricity from zero-carbon sources like wind and solar. . credit for individuals purchasing electric vehicles. It could also include $13.5 billion for electric car charging stations and $9 billion to update the power grid, and $17.5 billion to make the transmission of wind and solar power more convenient and reduce carbon dioxide emissions from federal buildings and vehicles.
But analysts say these spending programs, while helping the US economy make the transition to a less polluting future easier and cheaper, are unlikely to lead to the same kind of rapid transformation that the clean electricity program brings.
It’s also possible that Democrats are trying to pass the clean electricity program as a standalone bill – but the timeline for this is narrowing as the 2022 midterm elections approach.
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