The Joe Biden administration is said to be shoveling billions of dollars into efforts it hopes will spur enduring cuts to planet-heating emissions, no matter the occupant of the White House.
This is amid rising global temperatures and a looming election against an opponent who has indicated he will gut his climate policies.
In recent weeks, large tracts of funding has been announced by the administration to help overcome some of the thorniest and esoteric challenges the world faces in driving down carbon pollution, seeding the promise of everything from the advent of zero-emissions concrete to low-pollution food production, including mac and cheese and ice-cream, to driving the uptake of solar panels and electric stoves in low-income households.
“We are seeing billions of dollars going into really tricky parts of the energy transition and if there’s momentum behind this we will be measuring the impacts many years in the future,” Melissa Lott, a professor at Columbia University’s climate school said. “I would expect these investments to have knock-on impacts well outside the US’s borders.”
According to available information, the spending is the most significant yet to come via the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Biden’s signature climate bill, and the gusher of cash has a certain urgency.
Donald Trump, who has called some of Biden’s climate policies “insane”, could be president by January and Republicans, who have already attempted to gut the IRA and have called the latest spending a “greendoggle”, could hold Congress.
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“The money from the IRA needs to get out of the door due to the urgency of the climate crisis but also the politics of this year and next year,” said Lott. “If money has been already committed, it’s gone. It’s very tough for a new administration to pull back funding once it has already committed.”
But the new funding in many ways goes beyond the short-term politicking that has haunted the US’s ponderous response to the climate crisis. Last week, $20bn was awarded under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a mechanism set up by the IRA, to non-profit groups that will provide low-interest loans for clean energy projects, such as installing solar panels on community centers, or heat pumps and induction stoves in households that couldn’t otherwise afford them.
“For the first time in history, we are providing tens of billions of dollars directly to community lenders to finance local climate projects,” said Kamala Harris, the US vice-president, in unveiling the spending. Michael Regan, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said the funding would be “transformational”.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
