Exit strategy: Biden Moves to beef up climate initiatives before Trump takes over

By Douglas McIntyre  •  December 4, 2024
Monica Silvestre/Pexels.com

According to several media reports, President Joe Biden is attempting to fund all the green initiatives he plans to support before he leaves office, with the slower pace at which this funding happened earlier in the year probably being based on the assumption that he would win the election. Alternatively, he believed that Kamala Harris would continue his programs.

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The possible move comes with the tens of billions of dollars meant to go to environmental programs could be cut when President-elect Donald

Trump takes office in January. 

According to Semafor, “Realistically, most of those deals won’t close before Trump takes office, creating a risk that the new administration could pause or rescind them. Current and former DOE staff told Semafor they worry that the Loan Programs Office (LPO), a bastion of outgoing President Joe Biden’s climate agenda, could be drastically scaled back under Trump. They fear the incoming president may decide to leave roughly $340 billion in remaining loan authority either untouched or directed to projects favored by the fossil fuel industry.”

Global leadership
The immediate availability of dollars is only the tip of a much larger iceberg. The U.S. is still the world’s second-largest polluting nation, trailing only China. However, the central Chinese government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on green energy, in which it is, by far, the global leader. It is forecast that 2025 will be the all-time peak of fossil fuel use by the country of 1.4 billion people. 

Meanwhile, green energy financing has faced hurdles in the U.S., with the private sector having been reluctant to undertake funding, including wind energy projects, because they are considered risky. Oil prices are also low, mainly because of record U.S. production, which makes its use for energy generation attractive.

In addition, U.S. faces another daunting energy challenge: AI’s use of electricity is extraordinarily high and getting higher. Without government-supported green energy projects, U.S. emissions are likely to continue to rise. 

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