BIDEN PROMOTES CLEAN-ENERGY PLAN
Targets are far more ambitious than any of his past proposals
Joe Biden unveiled a proposal Tuesday to transform the nation’s energy industry, pledging to eliminate carbon pollution from power plants by 2035 and spend $2 trillion to turbocharge the clean energy economy.
The plan would significantly reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels, and the 15-year timeline for a 100 percent clean electricity standard is far more ambitious than anything Biden has previously proposed.
It was Biden’s latest attempt to channel the liberal energy in his party, as well as a response to calls for sweeping plans to lift a struggling economy. The blueprint was quickly hailed by environmentalists and liberals as a big step forward in the climate fight, and just as quickly denounced by Republicans as an unwieldy plan that would raise energy costs.
“We’re not just going to tinker around the edges,” Biden said in a speech in Wilmington, Del. “We’re going to make historic investments and seize the opportunity and meet this moment in history.”
The presumptive Democratic
presidential nominee proposed upgrading 4 million buildings and weatherizing 2 million homes over four years, which his campaign estimates would create 1 million jobs. Homeowners would be given cash rebates to upgrade home appliances and install more efficient windows. Car owners would receive rebates to swap their old, less efficient cars for newer ones that release fewer pollutants.
Biden also said he would create a new “Environmental and Climate Justice Division”
within the Justice Department to prosecute antipollution cases. “These aren’t pie-in-the-sky dreams,” he said. “These are actionable policies that we can get to work on right away.”
Many of Biden’s proposals build on the recommendations of a task force made up jointly of allies of Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT. Those recommendations include plans to dramatically expand solar and wind energy, including the installation of 500 million solar panels and 60,000 wind turbines.
Biden’s plan is likely to trigger a vigorous debate with President Donald Trump, who has a much different approach to the country’s energy sector and climate policy.
Trump, a strong backer of fossil fuels, has sought to roll back Obama-era policies aimed at decreasing carbon dioxide emissions and setting new standards for household items such as lightbulbs. He has also downplayed the science behind climate change, and in 2017 he pledged to pull the United States out of the Paris climate pact.
Trump’s embrace of the coal industry was one of his signature issues in 2016, part of his portrait of Hillary Clinton as disdainful of the country’s industrial workers. It’s not clear whether Trump can successfully level similar attacks against Biden, or whether the political landscape has shifted to make that difficult.
In 2016, Republicans attacked Clinton for her comment that “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” though Clinton was suggesting this would happen because of market forces, not as part of her plan.
Trump, meanwhile, pledged to revive the ailing coal industry, telling miners in West Virginia that “we are going to get those mines open” if he were elected. But the coal industry has continued to struggle under Trump, largely because of competition from natural gas and renewable energy.
The Trump campaign was quick to go after Biden’s proposal Tuesday.
“His plan is more like a socialist manifesto that promises to massively raise taxes, eliminate jobs in the coal, oil or natural gas industries, and crush the middle class,” said Hogan Gidley, the campaign’s national press secretary. “He’s pushing extreme policies that would smother the economy just when it’s showing signs of roaring back.”
Biden, in pledging Tuesday to achieve 100 percent clean electricity by 2035, embraced a more direct approach than President Barack Obama, his boss at the time, took a decade ago during his own efforts to rein in emissions from the power sector.
During his first year in office, Obama worked with congressional Democrats on a cap-and-trade system, in which companies buy and sell credits permitting them to release carbon into the atmosphere.
But the measure proved politically toxic. It passed the House but was never given a vote in the Senate.
Instead, Biden wants to require electric utilities to get more of their power from carbon-free sources — including wind, solar, nuclear and hydroelectric — and to improve the energy efficiency of their systems or face penalties.
While some changes could be made through executive actions, a sweeping plan like Biden’s could face resistance in Congress. If Biden wins, its fate may depend on whether Democrats retake the Senate, but the plan’s supporters say it has more appeal than a cap-andtrade system.