Decarbonising America: Joe Biden's climate-friendly energy revolution

[Celerity]

What it will take to fight rising temperatures

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/02/20/joe-bidens-climate-friendly-energy-revolution



Amid the dust and sagebrush of New Mexico there are 61 rigs at work. The south-eastern part of the state, which sits over the shales of the Permian basin that spans the border with Texas, has over the past decade attracted shale-oil specialists, oil majors like ExxonMobil and innumerable camp followers fixing pumps, selling pipe and hauling the sand used to fracture the underground strata. About 40,000 people in the state now work in the sector; the taxes it generates pay for a third of the state’s budget; and it accounts for about 1% of America’s greenhouse-gas emissions. President Joe Biden’s announcement in January of a temporary moratorium on new leases allowing drilling on federal land has not gone down well in this bit of the Permian; New Mexico accounts for more than half of such onshore oil production. The American Petroleum Institute (API), the industry’s main lobby, contends that the moratorium could cost the state 62,000 jobs. But for all the importance oil has in its economy, even New Mexico is preparing for a new energy era. The Democratic governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, wants her state’s emissions in 2030 to be at least 45% below their level in 2005, which given the recent oil boom means about 60% less than what they were in 2018. Across the state solar farms are being set up to harness the abundant sunshine and charging points provided for electric cars—just the sort of initiatives Mr Biden is seeking to accelerate as he aims to turn the American economy away from fossil fuels once and for all.

In January the president signed an executive order calling for the country to reduce its net greenhouse-gas emissions to zero by 2050, and to that end he wants the electricity sector to be emissions-free by 2035. Angelica Rubio, a New Mexico state representative who has relatives working on oil and gas projects in the Permian basin, acknowledges local resistance to Mr Biden’s decarbonisation goals. “It is drastic,” she says. “But this is the road map we need to take.” She is sponsoring a bill in the state legislature to ease the transition for oil workers. Any encouragement from within the shale patch will be welcome to Mr Biden’s team, which needs all the help it can get. In Europe, as in China, politicians are using industrial policy, regulations, carbon prices and other tools to lessen the risks associated with climate change and secure their place in a global clean-energy economy; some have got a fair way already (see article). But despite having played a key role in the negotiations which produced the Paris agreement in 2015—an agreement that it is re-joining on February 19th—America has to date offered no comprehensive outline of the goals and strategies it will use to tackle greenhouse-gas emissions which, in 2019, were equivalent to 5.3bn tonnes of carbon dioxide (see chart 1). Those emissions declined in 2020 by a staggering 9%, according to estimates from BloombergNEF, a data provider. But as the economy recovers they will bounce back quickly.



The lack of an ambitious national programme is largely down to the fact that America’s Republican Party couples political power with a climate nihilism to an almost unparalleled extent. Donald Trump called climate change a hoax and withdrew from the Paris agreement; his administration put significant effort into trying to roll back the regulations with which his predecessor, Barack Obama, had tried to lower emissions. That they are subject to such reversals is one of the reasons that executive orders and regulatory stances are a poor substitute for thoroughgoing legislation. But Mr Obama had little choice. The vast majority of Republicans elected to federal office reject policies to cut emissions, which is why Congress has not seriously confronted the issue for more than a decade. The power of Republicans in the Senate made it pointless. The problem is made worse by the fact that some conservative Democrats have their own reservations. Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, says that he supports climate action. But he rejects the idea that coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, might be permanently removed from the world’s energy portfolio: “Get into reality,” he says. “It’s not going to be eliminated.” The fact that the Senate is split 50-50 between the parties means that, even with Vice-President Kamala Harris’s casting vote, Mr Manchin in effect has a veto over legislation.

Should such obstacles lead to America punting for another decade, it will pay for the privilege. Delaying to 2030 would make the transition to a net-zero emissions economy almost twice as expensive as it would be if started today, with costs soaring to $750bn a year by 2035 and more than $900bn a year by the early 2040s, according to Energy Innovation, a policy group. But today’s urgency comes from greater concerns than fiscal prudence. America’s emissions are not only a problem for the climate in and of themselves. They are also a check on its opportunities to influence the rest of the world’s emissions, which copiously outweigh its own. A decisive American effort to reduce emissions would be a potent signal of solidarity and a great enabler of change. It is unlikely that poor- and middle-income countries, eager to lift their citizens out of poverty, will try hard to curb their emissions if the world’s richest nation declines to limit its own, which are among the world’s largest per person. A vibrant American programme would also guarantee levels of innovation devoted to the fight for a stable climate that easily exceed today’s. America’s wealth, national laboratories, universities, corporate giants and entrepreneurs, if properly harnessed to the task of decarbonisation, will undoubtedly produce novel approaches and technologies that would benefit other nations. And it would be a licence to persuade, shame and, where appropriate, bully. Mr Biden has charged John Kerry, who when secretary of state was an important player in the Paris negotiations, with leading efforts on climate change abroad (see Lexington). If he cannot point to progress at home, Mr Kerry’s job will be an unprofitable and thankless one.

Running down a dream...................

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