President Joe Biden setting an aggressive national target to slash emissions in half over the next decade would likely also prompt many companies to rethink and strengthen their own climate commitments, a U.S. corporate leader said.
“I think that you would see a rapid increase to moving to zero-carbon electrification,” said Hugh Welsh, head of DSM North America, in an interview. He suggested companies, including his own, would speed up the adoption of renewable energy, energy efficiency, and electric vehicles if the Biden administration commits to a strong national emissions reduction target.
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Welsh runs the North American arm of Dutch-based Royal DSM, which manufactures nutrition products and specialty materials. He said he could see his company, for example, increasing its renewable energy target to 100% by 2030, bolstered by an aggressive U.S. national climate target. Currently, more than 50% of the company’s operations run on renewable power.
DSM North America was one of more than 300 companies, including other major corporations such as Apple, Exelon, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, and Walmart, that pressed Biden this week to set a new target under the Paris climate agreement to cut emissions by 50% below 2005 levels by 2030.
The business support echoes calls from environmentalists, who say such a target is necessary to put the U.S. on track to reach net-zero emissions by midcentury. Biden is set to announce the new target ahead of a global climate summit he is hosting on Earth Day.
Welsh said he thinks the Biden administration can accomplish much with the existing regulatory framework, but he’d like to see modifications to the corporate tax code to support companies that invest in clean energy and a price on carbon.
Welsh has long been a supporter of a carbon price, pushing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce internally for years to take a more active stance on policies to curb emissions, a step the group took earlier this year.
Nonetheless, the Biden administration isn’t focusing on a carbon price for now, with national climate adviser Gina McCarthy telling reporters recently Biden’s “choice” was to push a clean electricity standard, which targets carbon-free power in the electricity sector by 2035.
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“I think the White House, at the moment, is so focused on getting something done quickly, and they understand that achieving, again, a meaningful and durable carbon price is something that’s complicated, and it’s going to take time,” Welsh said.
Nonetheless, Welsh said he believes a carbon tax should go hand-in-hand with the massive infrastructure proposal that Biden unveiled last month because the revenues from such a tax could fund clean energy projects and climate-resilient infrastructure.
