Biden wants to cut emissions and that would mean a very different America

Special for Infobae from The New York Times.

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden’s new promise to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States over the next decade is highly ambitious and fuzzy, but experts say that to be successful would require rapid and radical changes in almost all countries. corners of the nation’s economy, in order to transform the way Americans drive to work, heat their homes, and operate their factories.

In several recent studies, researchers have looked at what the United States would have to look like in the future if it is to meet Biden’s new climate goal: reducing emissions that warm the planet by at least 50 percent below 2005 levels for the United States. year 2030.

By the end of the decade, those studies suggest that more than half of new cars and sports utility vehicles (SUVs) sold at dealerships will have to run on electricity, not gasoline. Almost all coal-fired power plants would have to be shut down. The forests would have to be expanded. The number of wind turbines and solar panels dotting the country’s landscape would have to quadruple.

The researchers say that, in theory, it is possible to achieve this, but it is a huge challenge. To achieve this, the Biden administration would have to implement a broad set of new federal policies, many of which could encounter obstacles in Congress or in the courts. And lawmakers will need to be careful in crafting measures that do not cause serious economic damage, such as widespread job losses or rising energy prices, which could trigger a pushback.

“This is not an easy task,” said Nathan Hultman, director of the Center for Global Sustainability at the University of Maryland. “We will not be able to sit back and wait for market forces to do the job alone.”

For now, the United States has the upper hand. The country’s greenhouse gas emissions have already declined about 21 percent since 2005, according to estimates from the Rhodium Group, an energy research and consulting company. Much of that decline is due to power companies shutting down hundreds of their dirtiest coal plants and now using natural gas, wind and solar power, which are cheaper and cleaner energy.

Yet to date, about a third of the reductions have come as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, as business activity plummeted and Americans traveled less by car. That decline is likely to be short-lived. “We expect emissions to rebound this year as the economy recovers, so we are already backing up a bit,” said Kate Larsen, director of the Rhodium Group.

The most difficult is yet to come. In a recent study, Hultman and his colleagues developed a workable model to achieve a reduction in emissions of at least 50 percent by 2030. According to their hypothesis, the necessary changes would be far-reaching:

– By 2030, half of the country’s electricity would have to come from renewable sources such as wind, solar or hydroelectric power, an increase from the current fifth. The new natural gas plants would be built for the most part with technology capable of capturing and burying carbon dioxide, rather than releasing it into the atmosphere, a technology that is still in its infancy. And most or all of the remaining 200 coal-fired plants would have to close.

– Two-thirds of new cars and SUVs sold would have to run on batteries by the end of the decade, compared to two percent today. All new buildings would have to be heated with electricity instead of natural gas.

– The country’s cement, steel and chemical industries would have to adopt stringent new energy efficiency targets. Oil and gas producers would have to cut emissions of methane, a powerful heat-trapping gas, by 60 percent.

– The country’s forests would have to be expanded and agricultural practices modified in order to extract 20 percent more carbon dioxide from the air than today.

Although this study offers only one possible strategy for the United States to meet its goal, it illustrates the enormous scale of the envisioned transformation. “These are massive changes in electricity and transportation, and yet we can’t just focus on those sectors,” Hultman said. “If we fall short in any area, the task becomes much more difficult.”

It is not yet known whether the Biden administration can adopt new policies that actually achieve all of those goals. The White House has yet to lay out the precise steps it will take to ensure that the United States reaches its new climate goal, although it has given some signs.

For example, Biden has floated the idea of ​​a clean electricity standard that could require utilities to source all of their electricity from low-carbon sources, such as wind, solar, nuclear, or even natural gas. with carbon sequestration, by 2035. However, that policy faces a battle in Congress.

Republicans have already harshly criticized Biden’s climate goal as detrimental to the US economy. “The president’s plan will cost working families a fortune in higher energy bills,” declared Wyoming Republican Senator John Barrasso. “It will also hurt the international competitiveness of the United States,” he added.

Biden tried to frame the transformation as a great economic opportunity. “I see electrical workers installing thousands of miles of transmission lines for a clean, modern and robust network,” he said Thursday. “I see engineers and construction workers developing new green hydrogen and carbon capture plants for cleaner steel and cement.”

Ultimately, experts say, in order for Biden to achieve his climate goals, he will have to win that debate and show that new clean energy industries that benefit Americans can be rapidly expanded and new and broad constituencies can be created. that make their policies difficult to reverse on the political stage.

There are some precedents in this regard. Obama expanded tax incentives for wind and solar power during his two terms, helping lower the costs of both technologies and fostering large new industries that now employ hundreds of thousands of workers. In December, during the Trump administration, bipartisan majorities in Congress agreed to extend tax credits for technologies like wind and solar without making a big splash.

And the federal government would not necessarily act alone. States like California and New York, separately, are trying to meet their own ambitious emission reduction targets. Cities across the country are enacting stricter building codes and installing charging stations for electric vehicles. Large companies such as General Motors or Google have made concrete promises to make the switch to electric vehicles and cleaner energy.

While many of these promises are still uncertain (and are more prevalent in Democratic than Republican-ruled states), experts say that a large expansion of these local and business efforts could help propel the United States toward its goal if the federal government falls short.

“If climate action becomes much more widespread at the state, municipal or corporate level, it will be much more entrenched,” Hultman said. “So these climate goals would not be just a numbers game, but a transformation of society.”