"How The House Spending Bill Addresses Climate Change"

"The budget reconciliation proposal passed by the House would mark the biggest climate investment in U.S. history at half a trillion dollars. It would also move President Biden closer to his administration’s ambition goals of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The bottom line: The majority of the funding, totaling more than $300 billion, would provide tax incentives for expanding clean energy generation, electric vehicles, transmission lines and other infrastructure to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Significant additional provisions would bolster the nation’s resilience against damages caused by climate change and targets climate-friendly investments in clean energy technology development, manufacturing and the supply chain. ...

Of course, Democrats didn’t get all they had hoped for. One of the top wish-list items left out was the Clean Energy Performance Program, which would reward power companies that increased their share of renewables by 4 percent a year and penalize those that didn’t.

Documents from the White House and analyses by independent experts suggest the legislation will reduce U.S. annual carbon dioxide emissions by about a gigaton, nearly a sixth of its current annual emissions. Here are more details on how it aims to do that."

Tik Root and Dino Grandoni report for the Washington Post November 19, 2021.

SEE ALSO:

"What’s in the $2.2 Trillion Social Policy and Climate Bill" (New York Times)

"Biden Wants 5 Times The Climate Spending Obama Won. That’s Still 5 Times Too Small." (HuffPost)

Source: Washington Post, 11/22/2021