Going, but not Forgotten: Biden’s $1 trillion clean energy and infrastructure legacy

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There are less than 60 days left for President Joe Biden to claim what he can of his legacy and he’s not planning to waste it.

While investors prepare for what a new Trump Administration will bring come January, especially in clean energy markets, Biden crowed this week that in the last four years his policies led to more than $1 trillion in private-sector investments in clean energy and infrastructure.

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Politicians can work magic with numbers, as we saw at the failed COP29 summit last week, when $300 billion in new pledges to help poorer countries adapt to global warming was derided by all sides as insufficient and likely not credible.

But the Biden team has more solid footing in its latest claims. Its Inflation Reduction Act has created more than 640 new battery, solar and wind projects and 330,000 new jobs in the two years since it passed. Add that to the Infrastructure Act and you get, according to the White House, more than 1.6 million jobs.

Last-minute scramble
The Biden team is working overtime in these precious last few weeks to distribute as much of the remaining IRA and infrastructure funds as possible before Trump takes power.

Trump is not expected to rescind existing projects but he will take away any clean energy subsidies that drive momentum from fossil fuel priorities.

Biden is attempting to create a scorecard to match against whatever Trump does for the economy, in the hopes it will bolster his legacy and help future Democratic candidates.

For now, Wall Street appears to be paying little attention. Clean energy entrepreneurs are another story.