President Joe Biden is proposing massive spending increases across federal agencies to combat the effects of climate change and promote clean energy technologies — though he will have to win support from Congress for his plans to succeed.
The White House budget proposal for fiscal year 2022, released Friday, incorporates Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan, which already includes significant funding to boost technologies such as renewable energy, electric vehicles, and nascent clean energy technologies such as carbon capture and storage.
BIDEN UNVEILS BUDGET REQUEST SOME EXPERTS WARN WOULD RUN UP A $1.8 TRILLION DEFICIT
On top of those investments, Biden is proposing additional climate spending of more than $36 billion across several agencies, which includes investments in clean energy research and deployment, funding to help regions adapt to the effects of warming, and money to help developing nations curb climate change.
To boost clean energy research alone, the budget proposal would spend more than $10 billion, a nearly 30% increase over the fiscal year 2021 spending.
“These investments would help transform the Nation’s electric, transportation, buildings, and industrial sectors to achieve a net-zero carbon economy by 2050,” the White House proposal states.
It’s a dramatic reversal from White House budget proposals in the last four years, in which the Trump administration attempted to eliminate climate spending and gut the budgets of federal agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, responsible for regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
Biden’s proposal is only a blueprint of his priorities. He will have to work with Congress to enact these spending levels, and he is already having a tough time bringing Republicans on board with the climate spending in his infrastructure plan.
Republicans’ latest infrastructure counteroffer cuts out nearly all of the climate and clean energy spending Biden proposed, only including a few narrow climate provisions and just $4 billion for electric vehicles, compared to the $174 billion Biden’s plan would direct toward vehicle electrification.
Biden proposes even more electric vehicle spending in his budget outside of the infrastructure plans. The budget proposal would spend $600 million on electric vehicles and charging infrastructure across 18 federal agencies.
That would include funds for the General Services Administration and the United States Postal Service to procure electric vehicles, a step toward reaching Biden’s goal of electrifying the entire federal fleet. While the Biden administration has already made progress increasing federal orders of electric vehicles, it starts from a low baseline.
Biden’s budget plans also are geared to deliver on his promises to create new clean energy jobs.
For example, Biden aims to spend $2 billion on clean energy projects, to support his proposal for requirements that utilities reach carbon-free electricity by 2035. The budget also pledges $580 million to support efforts to plug abandoned oil and gas wells that leak the potent greenhouse gas methane and reclaim abandoned mines, which Biden has boasted could create hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Biden’s budget also proposes more than $4 billion to expand climate change research, including $1 billion to create an innovation hub similar to the Energy Department’s research hub for nascent energy technologies.
For foreign climate aid, Biden pledges to contribute $1.2 billion to the Green Climate Fund, the financing arm of the Paris climate agreement that directs money to developing nations. Former President Barack Obama had pledged the U.S. would contribute $3 billion, though the Trump administration reneged on that commitment and didn’t contribute anything over its four years in office.
Biden’s budget proposal also includes $485 million for other multilateral climate efforts and around $700 million to the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development to help other countries adapt to climate change and expand clean energy.
Beyond the new spending figures, the Biden budget proposal gives a more detailed look at how the administration is seeking to expand clean energy tax incentives, a key piece of the climate investments in the infrastructure plan.
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According to the budget, expanding and extending by 10 years tax incentives for renewable energy would cost more than $265 billion. The White House also proposes to spend $9.7 billion over 10 years for tax incentives to existing nuclear power plants, $10.6 billion on tax credits for zero-emissions trucks, $4.1 billion for incentives for low-carbon hydrogen, and $6 billion to expand and enhance tax credits for carbon capture technology.
In addition, the White House is pledging to eliminate subsidies for fossil fuels, which the Treasury Department has said would save the federal government roughly $35 billion over the next 10 years.
