Ted Shaffrey/AP Photo
Wind turbines spin to generate electrical power in Atlantic City, New Jersey, February 17, 2021.
President Biden’s American Jobs Plan has put the United States on an aggressive path toward a clean electricity standard (CES) that, at least for the moment, is ambitious in scope and vague in the particulars. The administration would require electric utilities to incorporate specified amounts of solar or wind and cleaner fuels in their energy portfolios and increase those sources over time, correspondingly decreasing dirtier fuels, to achieve “100 percent carbon-pollution free electricity by 2035.”
That’s one of the details that politicos, environmentalists, and infrastructure cognoscenti are now eagerly picking apart. The purposeful vagueness of the proposal doesn’t really tamp down objections in a Congress drowning in discord, and it also raises a host of other questions: What are the interim goals along the way to Biden’s 2035? Eighty percent by 2030? Will there be tax or other financial incentives right off the bat? Will utilities that fail to meet the CES standard have to pay a penalty? And what does “clean” even mean?
The only thing certain in this fractious environment is that the United States hasn’t been serious enough about sufficiently cutting greenhouse gas emissions to stave off the most serious effects of atmospheric collapse. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm indicated last week that the administration wants to work across the aisle but might consider passing the proposal through reconciliation. And that process might be the answer if Senate Republicans continue to treat climate crisis legislation like kindergartners deprived of milk and cookies before nap time.
Well, they might. The question is whether the Biden administration will succumb to the pressure for watered-down rulemaking in hopes of winning some bipartisan support. Majorities of Americans support clean-energy goals, and some 30 states have established clean-energy requirements or goals. But as Northeastern states and California rush to clean up their collective acts, the Southern and industrial Midwestern states, where coal-fired power plants and the electric utilities that own them still predominate, blithely ignore the threats to Earth’s climate.
“The clean states are willing to be cleaner, but the dirty states haven’t been willing to take much of a step,” says economist John Reilly, a senior lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
The only thing certain in this fractious environment is that the United States hasn’t been serious enough about sufficiently cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
So the key question on CES is whether Biden and the Democrats will ditch the bipartisanship fantasy in favor of reconciliation. An Evergreen Collaborative/Data for Progress report, “A Roadmap to 100% Clean Electricity by 2035,” identified at least three proposals featuring zero-emissions electricity credit systems, “cash-like assets” regulated by the federal government that could qualify for reconciliation. But forcing a bill through the Senate doesn’t mean the administration is home free; the resulting standard may fall prey to court challenges similar to the ones that brought down Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan or the whims of the next Republican Congress, or president, or both.
Or do the Democrats set weaker standards to win the support of the few Republicans willing to accept any standards at all? Biden has scattered enough clues in his proposal to suggest that settling for less could be one way to reel in enough Republicans to claim a bipartisan majority. The choices are so fraught for some climate advocates that they prefer to pursue a more modest strategy with broader bipartisan appeal—such as a ten-year extension on existing clean-energy generation and storage tax credits—while continuing to pursue more thorough state-level standards and goals. “Flawed policy may do more damage than not having the policy at all,” says Johanna Neumann, senior director for Environment America’s Campaign for 100% Renewable Energy.
Questions also remain about how committed Democrats are to standards tied to 100 percent renewable energy or to a mix of energy sources that includes nuclear or biomass. There are bipartisan coalitions led by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and John Barrasso (R-WY), the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, that support nuclear energy (which is carbon-free but poses waste storage dilemmas for some Democrats and climate advocates) and other alternative technologies like carbon capture and sequestration.
The White House has realized that finding a niche for nuclear energy is another way to bring Republicans along. (Its American Jobs Plan notes that the CES will “continue to leverage the carbon pollution-free energy provided by existing sources like nuclear and hydropower.”) That said, nuclear energy is anathema in some quarters. The 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster took the luster off the sector in Japan and Germany, but in the U.S., a new nuclear plant is planned for Georgia, and new, smaller nuclear plants are in the research and development stages even though they pose many of the same risks as conventional plants and cannot be brought online fast enough to make a difference. Proponents of nuclear argue that such plants can serve as a bridge fuel in the transition to renewables, at least until the solar and wind energy sectors can surmount the storage challenges posed by current levels of technology.
Then there are the powerful utility companies, wedded to the 20th-century model of large-scale power distribution networks, that sprinkle campaign donations all over Capitol Hill. “The energy system of the future is a network of decentralized energy sources, decentralized small-scale storage facilities that can share power locally and across regions using high-capacity transmission lines,” says Neumann. “That kind of energy system is really different from what we have now, and the utilities are kicking and screaming, dragging their heels as our country moves in that direction.”
After failing to scuttle the COVID-19 recovery plan, attempting to derail another Biden initiative continues to pose risks for a Republican Party that’s forgotten what it means to legislate for the common good, even when polls show that a significant share of Republicans support such common-good proposals. With an above-average hurricane and a catastrophic wildfire season looming, failing to sign on to a major climate initiative or even come up with a workable alternative only drives home the dangers posed by weak, ideologically driven posturing in the face of the perils ahead.
