After the US government scaled back new climate regulations meant to force emissions cuts from cars and power plants, the Biden administration said that it will have a negligible impact on its overarching goal to halve greenhouse gas pollution this decade. This would, however, depend on whether the US succeeds in its parallel strategy – to use lucrative taxpayer subsidies to fuel a massive deployment of solar, wind and other renewable energy installations.
Biden hopes the latter route will ultimately power America’s fleet of electric vehicles, along with its homes and businesses, according to researchers. “I think it will require an extraordinary, coordinated effort to meet the clean energy share that is necessary to hit the (US target),” said Mike O’Boyle, senior director for electricity at research firm Energy Innovation.
With the US being the world’s biggest historical emitter of carbon dioxide, President Joe Biden had promised the international community that it will push hard to decarbonize as part of global efforts to fight climate change, using a combination of regulation and subsidies. However, the recent decisions by his administration to ease auto emissions standards and to remove existing natural gas-fired power plants from CO2 curbs show the administration is under industry pressure. This comes ahead of the November election.
Half of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions are emitted by the transport and power sectors together but the perception of heavy-handed regulation of those industries risks hurting Biden’s reelection bid against rival and former President Donald Trump.
Climate researchers agreed with official projections from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that the changes to the rules may not have much impact on the US goal to halve national emissions by 2030 from 2005 levels.
Amanda Levin, director of policy analysis at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the weakening of the EPA vehicle rule, for example, would still achieve at least 90% of the emissions reductions of the more stringent initial proposal. However, the removal of existing gas plants from the EPA power plant rule would deliver 80% of the initial proposal.