President Joe Biden launched an ambitious and aggressive green energy program when he took office in 2021. He will try to expand on that strategy if he is re-elected to a second term in November.
“I think you can plan for incrementally more of what we’ve seen so far. That’s pursuing a green energy agenda,” said Mark Finley, fellow in energy and global oil at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.
Finley sees Biden trying to extend his sustainable energy and climate action measures even further in a second term, “leavened by the reality that the U.S. is still dependent on fossil fuels.”
In his White House tenure, Biden has introduced energy-related policies and actions in support of several “hard” goals. Those focus on reducing carbon emissions and directing money toward development of renewable or non-hydrocarbon energy sources:
- Achieve a net-zero carbon emissions U.S. economy by 2050
- Ensure a 100-percent carbon-pollution-free U.S. electricity supply by 2035
- Reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 50-52-percent below 2005 levels by 2030
- Deliver 40 percent of the benefits from federal investments in climate and clean energy to disadvantaged communities
Biden also has backed other, softer energy-related goals. Those can be seen as primarily aspirational, such as installing 500,000 electric-vehicle charging stations, or having EVs account for at least 50 percent of new passenger vehicles sold in the United States by 2030.
Fossil Fuel Foil
While directing support toward renewable energy sources, Biden also has taken measures to slow development of oil, natural gas and coal. Those steps include cutbacks to lease sales involving federal lands and waters and regulations affecting oil industry operations.
Notably, Biden revoked a key permit for the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office, restricted oil and gas leasing on 13 million acres of a federal petroleum reserve in Alaska and promoted strict new regulations on well venting, flaring and methane emissions.
In January, the White House announced a temporary pause on approving new liquefied natural gas export projects “until the Department of Energy can update the underlying analyses for authorizations.” New approval criteria could include more emphasis on the effect of greenhouse gas emissions.
“I think the LNG permitting pause will get a lot of attention,” becoming a magnet for Republican Party reaction, Finley said.
He predicted Biden will continue to speed up the leasing and approval process for high-voltage power lines and wind and solar farms, while further slowing the permitting process for fossil fuel development.
“In a second Biden Administration you would see even more efforts to slow that development, to slow down that (oil and gas) leasing,” he said.
Policies to Come
Future energy-related actions already announced by Biden or his campaign include:
- Reducing fees for solar and wind projects on public lands by 80 percent
- Supporting deployment of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030
- Expediting environmental reviews of improvements to electric transmission lines and upgrading 100,000 miles of lines over the next five years
- Delivering residential solar power to more than 900,000 U.S. households in low-income and disadvantaged communities
- Tripling participation in the American Climate Corps: “Patterned after the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps, I launched the Climate Corps to put 20,000 young people to work in the forefront of our clean energy future. I’ll triple that number in a decade,” Biden said in his 2024 State of the Union address.
“I think we will continue to see a focus on trying to provide more support for mass transit, if they can get that,” predicted David Spence, professor and chair in natural resources law at the University of Texas-Austin School of Law.
“They have a number of tools they can try to use more aggressively through the Department of Energy or FERC (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission),” but “without Congress, Biden can’t do much more on the electricity side of things,” Spence said.
Nuclear Power Development
Biden also has promoted the development of small-scale nuclear reactors, accelerating the production and use of hydrogen for fuel cells and funding demonstration projects for advanced geothermal systems.
In May, the White House announced creation of a Nuclear Power Project Management and Delivery working group, tasked with finding ways to mitigate cost and schedule overruns in nuclear power development. At the same time, the U.S. Army revealed plans to establish a program for advanced reactors to power multiple Army bases.
“There’s bipartisan support for advanced nuclear reactors, small modular reactors that are slightly differently designed from existing ones,” said Joshua Busby, professor of public affairs at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin.
“Nuclear power would be a helpful backstop for intermittent renewables,” he noted.
Small modular reactors typically have a generating capacity of up to 300 megawatts per unit. They can be prefabricated, then shipped to a site to be installed. Advantages claimed for SMRs include simpler design, reduced fuel use, lower operating pressure and increased safety margins.
Critical Minerals
Busby said another area Biden might address more forcefully in a second term is access to critical minerals and materials important to green-energy technologies. The United States imports more than 80 percent of its essential rare Earth elements, according to the White House.
In EV battery production, “there are some key bottlenecks around critical minerals like graphite,” Busby noted, while China controls most of the world’s processing and refining capacity for cobalt and lithium.
Biden has made U.S. jobs creation – and job protection – a cornerstone of his energy policies. That has led him to take some actions unpopular with his environmentally-oriented supporters, including tariffs and other restrictions on imported green-energy technology and goods, and a recently imposed 100-percent import tariff on EVs.
“One thing that would be true for both (Biden and Trump) is a focus on domestic energy and domestic energy jobs. Under both of them, the ‘Made in America’ theme is going to become more important in the next four years,” Finley said.
Carbon Sticks and Carrots
So far, the Biden administration hasn’t promoted legislation that would mandate direct carbon pricing, such as a carbon tax or other taxes or fees based on greenhouse-gas emissions. Instead, Biden has leaned into a “social cost of carbon” metric to evaluate new energy development.
Finley said he would be surprised to see Biden move toward direct carbon pricing, although “export controls, in a crisis, I could certainly see that,” he said.
The Administration tipped its hand on the issue earlier this year when it published a joint statement of policy on voluntary carbon markets. The policy outlined principles government officials would recognize to “help VCMs achieve their potential,” or to help ensure carbon credits are meaningful and effective.
VCMs enable governments, businesses, investors and other entities to trade – buy and sell – verified emission reductions in the form of carbon credits. One credit typically represents one metric ton of CO2 reduced or removed from the atmosphere.
“In too many instances, credits do not live up to the high standards necessary for market participants to transact transparently and with certainty that credit purchases will deliver verifiable decarbonization,” the White House noted.
Biden’s attempt to strengthen the integrity of carbon markets signals a preference for voluntary, market-driven credit trading to reduce emissions, rather than mandatory carbon reduction strategies like direct carbon pricing.
Politics of the Pump
In part, that reflects a pragmatic approach to avoiding high energy prices, especially gasoline prices. When average U.S. gas prices soared above $5/gallon in 2022, Biden asked oil companies to increase production and released more than 180 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
“A lot depends on the price of gasoline, really. When the price of gasoline is high, even Democrats want there to be more gasoline,” Spence observed.
“Any U.S. president has minimal ability to influence world oil prices or prices at the pump,” Finley said. “Prices at the pump are going to remain a political reality for everybody. It’s hard for me to imagine the vehicle fleet turning over fast enough to change that.”
The first half of 2024 brought a rush of regulations and executive actions on energy from the Biden White House. Under the Congressional Review Act, once a new federal agency rule is formally submitted, Congress has 60 legislative days to introduce a joint resolution disapproving the rule by simple-majority vote.
A Republican-controlled Congress in early 2017 used the CRA to overturn 16 rules issued late in the Obama administration. Biden has tried to promulgate and issue new rules early enough to avoid CRA repeal.
This indicates a strategic shift for the White House. Biden essentially spent his first three years in office on offense. In a second term, he would spend a higher percentage of time playing defense.
“On some level, what Biden can do in a second administration is to keep the structure in place that passed with the Inflation Reduction Act, fend off any legislative challenges that might come and keep implementing,” Busby said.
If Biden wins the presidency again in November, he will no longer have to be concerned about protecting his chances for re-election. But much of his ability to act will be determined by which party controls the House and the Senate. And Democratic Party politics will not end with a second Biden term.
“Someone will be running as a Democrat in 2028, and there’s the question of energy-state Democrats,” Finley said.
From the opposite direction, Biden will continue to face pressure from the left wing of the Democratic Party. And that pressure to advance green energy measures and restrict hydrocarbon development may well intensify.
“He’s done more than any other president to push this transition along. And he still has progressives carping at him,” Spence observed.
If Joe Biden is re-elected in November, he will try to protect the sustainable energy measures passed during his first term, and to expand his green energy agenda as far as he can.