Climate change in the USA: Joe Biden’s disappointing carbon footprint

Biden moved into the White House as climate president, pushing for a global alliance to stop global warming. But nine months after taking office, it seems as if the USA, the second largest CO2 polluter after China, is stepping on the brakes. Biden’s goal of a green U-turn is barely making any headway.

“After the Donald Trump years, the US president wanted to quickly open a new chapter,” says Barry Rabe, climate and environmental expert at the Brookings think tank in Washington. “He wanted to prove from day one that the world can count on the USA. But we still don’t know whether and what Biden can actually deliver. “

A trillion package is getting smaller and smaller

At the heart of his climate agenda are two trillion packages in Congress that are intended to accelerate the American energy transition. After all, Biden has set ambitious goals on paper.

US greenhouse gas emissions are expected to halve by 2030, and the US economy is expected to have made the transition to carbon neutrality by the middle of the century. But wing struggles in his own party have been blocking progress for months, and votes in Congress have had to be postponed several times.

This week, the US president held a crisis meeting in which, according to participants, Biden said, “US prestige around the world is at stake.” According to the White House, a new vote could be scheduled in the next few days. “The time window to pass a law is threatening to close,” warned the government headquarters in an unusually alarmist tone.

Actually, Biden wanted to present a success in the summer. The $ 1.2 trillion infrastructure package is consensus, it was passed in August in a non-partisan way in the US Senate, one of two chambers in Congress. The US would be taking more money into its own hands than ever before to modernize bridges, roads and buildings, and to promote e-mobility and disaster control.

But the package is stuck in the House of Representatives, the second Chamber of Congress. Because the left-wing democratic camp will only approve the infrastructure package if Congress passes a budget package worth $ 3.5 trillion in parallel, if necessary single-handedly and without Republican votes.

This mega-package contains significant investments in climate protection, partly financed by higher taxes. However, the expert Rabe assumes that the second, decisive climate reform will come “only in a weakened form”.

In the latest round of negotiations, reported the Washington Post, Biden reduced the larger package to a maximum of 1.9 trillion dollars. He is thus accommodating a handful of moderate Democrats in the US Senate, who can cause everything to fail because of the narrow majorities. The head of the energy committee, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, comes from conservative West Virginia, one of the nation’s largest coal suppliers.

What the US economy has to adjust to

Manchin and other centrists are not fundamentally against green energies. Tax incentives for e-cars and other bonuses will probably remain in the package. “You can achieve a lot with that,” explains Rabe.

But Biden will have to cut back on one core element of the reform that will cost 150 billion dollars: The so-called Clean Electricity Program rewards energy providers who rely on solar, wind and nuclear power – and punishes those who depend on fossil fuels.

“This approach is completely new in the USA, we have never done anything like this before,” says Rabe. Should the passage fly out of the law, the climate reform would be “a lot less ambitious than Biden once promised”.

Currently, 40 percent of the electricity in the US comes from renewable sources or nuclear power. If Biden has its way, the rate should be twice as high by 2030. But without a strong law, it would be “very difficult to achieve this goal,” says the expert.

The left wing does not yet seem ready to give up the clean electricity program. “We cannot afford to hollow out the package,” warned Democratic MP Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “Only a major reform can neutralize the damage of the last few decades and let us cope with the climate crisis,” said the New Yorker. “We need clean energy. That is a moral imperative for humanity. “

Even the oil and gas companies are starting to rethink

In recent years, however, a lot has changed even without guidelines from Washington, even in climate-hostile times under Trump. Many companies are designing their strategies sustainably out of self-interest: More and more people want to drive e-cars and more and more investors want their systems to be climate-friendly.

For example, the largest US car company, General Motors, under CEO Mary Barra, has already announced that it will only produce electric cars in 2035. Competitor Ford announced just a few months ago that it would invest 22 billion in electrification and that 40 percent of its vehicles should be electric cars by 2030.

Even the oil and gas companies are starting to rethink their thinking, influenced not least by Wall Street. The activist hedge fund “Engine No1”, for example, with the support of powerful pension funds, ensured that Exxon Mobil had to replace three of its twelve board members and replace them with experts in renewable energies.

Some of the numbers that the private sector is presenting are impressive. Companies like Apple, PwC, Facebook, Microsoft and Burger King want to bring their CO2 emissions to zero by 2030. Amazon, PepsiCo and Visa want to do this by 2040. American Airlines and United Airlines, for which the reduction is much more complicated, also want to achieve this by 2050.

But reality shows how much still needs to be done before the US meets its climate targets: According to a study by the Electric Power Research Institute, most coal-fired power plants will have to close this decade, although the majority of energy companies will continue to rely on fossil fuels.

To do this, the proportion of e-cars would have to increase to up to 70 percent – at the moment it is just under two percent. According to the business community, the transformation will not succeed without state aid. “We need incentives to get the e-car market rolling,” said Volkswagen’s US boss Scott Keogh in an interview with Handelsblatt.

Biden’s power is limited

While there is a standstill on Capitol Hill, Biden tries to hasten change by decree. In his first week in the Oval Office, for example, the President issued a moratorium on new oil and gas wells in federal areas.

The EPA announced last week that it would massively restrict chemicals that warm the world in cooling and refrigeration systems, and stricter emission standards for power plants and new vehicles are also being discussed.

Recently, the White House also revealed plans for a gigantic offshore strategy: Almost the entire coast of the USA is to be equipped with wind farms. But many measures take a long time to be implemented. Biden has also by no means exhausted the potential for regulations: The US government is not touching subsidies on private land for the time being, and Biden also dropped a fracking ban.

One reason for this is the polarized political landscape, as there is a threat of lawsuits from republican-ruled states in particular. Courts nationwide are conservative – a legacy from Trump’s time that installed hundreds of conservative judges at the local, state, and federal levels. “Everything that Biden decides in the area of ​​climate and the environment will meet with resistance,” explains Rabe.

The USA would need a comprehensive climate reform if they want to become greener in the long term. In contrast to decrees, decisions in Congress outlast a change of government. “A great law is much more stable and credible than what the next president can undo with the stroke of a pen.”

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