Biden to propose aggressive emissions plan
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden this week will pledge to slash U.S. greenhouse gas emissions at least in half by the end of the decade, according to two individuals briefed on the plan, as part of an aggressive push to combat climate change at home and persuade other major economies to follow suit.
The move comes as Biden convenes a virtual summit of more than three dozen world leaders on Thursday, aimed at ratcheting up international climate ambitions and re-establishing the United States as a leader in the effort to slow the planet’s warming.
The planned U.S. pledge represents a near-doubling of the target that the nation committed to under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, when President Barack Obama vowed to cut emissions between 26 percent and 28 percent compared with 2005 levels.
Asked for comment, a White House official said a final decision had not been made.
The Paris accord, which President Donald Trump exited but Biden promptly rejoined, was designed with the expectation that countries would embrace bigger, bolder targets over time.
“The Biden-Harris administration will do more than any in history to meet our climate crisis,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a speech Monday. “This is already an all-hands-on-deck effort across our government and across our nation. Our future depends on the choices we make today.”
The administration probably will offer broad strokes rather than a detailed breakdown of how it will meet the more ambitious target, according to the individuals briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plan had not been formally announced. Officials are considering a target range, they added, which could go above 50 percent at the higher end.
Still, the new pledge will offer the latest glimpse at the profound changes that Biden wants to set in motion, from decarbonizing the country’s energy sector to phasing out gas-powered vehicles. Administration officials have made clear that they see the effort not only as a climate pursuit but as a massive investment in a new generation of jobs nationwide.
“We’re going to do it in a way that’s very deliberate,” White House domestic climate adviser Gina McCarthy told reporters Monday in a call organized by the World Resources Institute. The administration wants to transition to a cleaner economy with well-paying occupations in communities that have been hardest hit by unemployment and underinvestment, she said. “It’s intended to meet the moment we are in.”
The forthcoming pledge also is meant to serve as a marker for the kind of scope — and urgency — that the Biden administration wants other countries to embrace ahead of a critical United Nations climate gathering this fall in Scotland.
Some nations, including those that are part of the European Union, have locked in more aggressive emissions-cutting targets. The United Kingdom on Tuesday announced a commitment to reducing its emissions by 78 percent by 2035, compared to 1990 levels — a goal that the government said would take the nation more than three-quarters of the way toward reaching net zero by 2050.
But other major emitters, including China, India and Russia, have yet to spell out how they intend to help put the world on a more sustainable trajectory.
China, the largest greenhouse gas polluter, has said it plans to effectively erase its carbon footprint by 2060, though the details remain unclear. Still, despite myriad diplomatic tensions between the two countries, the United States and China vowed Saturday to jointly combat climate change “with the seriousness and urgency that it demands.”
The world remains nowhere near meeting the central Paris aim of limiting Earth’s warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial levels. Failure to hit those targets, scientists have warned, will result in a cascade of costly and devastating effects.
“We are on the verge of the abyss,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said Monday, as a new World Meteorological Organization report detailed the intensification of extreme weather events and underscored that 2020 was one of the hottest years recorded.
“This must be the year for action — the make-it-or-break-it year,” Guterres said.
The International Energy Agency this week projected that global carbon dioxide emissions are set to rise by 1.5 billion tons in 2021 — the second-largest increase in history — as the world comes out of the pandemic-induced downturn. Coal demand in the electricity sector will drive the emissions rise, according to the agency.
“This is a dire warning that the economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis is currently anything but sustainable for our climate,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol in a statement.
n the United States, the power sector represents one of the best opportunities to cut greenhouse gas emissions. On Friday, a collection of 13 utilities, including Exelon, National Grid and PSGE, urged Biden to pursue a range of policies “to enable deep decarbonization of the power sector, including a clean electricity standard that ensures the power sector, as a whole, reduces its carbon emissions by 80 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.”
It remains unclear whether Congress will adopt Biden’s new infrastructure plan, which includes generous federal support for climate priorities like electric vehicles, renewable projects and energy efficiency upgrades.