If the Biden administration thinks it’s still on track to slash U.S. emissions in line with its aggressive international pledge, it’s not sharing the details publicly—or with key members of Congress.
In a Senate hearing this week featuring Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan, Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito grilled the EPA chief on his failure to disclose the administration’s plan to cut emissions 50 percent below high-water levels recorded in 2005.
“We’ve asked for that, and we haven’t received that ability to have a full-out briefing on this particular thing—numerous times asked,” Capito told Regan. “In reducing the emissions, who’s going to lose the jobs here? Because we know that’s going to happen. You know that’s going to happen.”
That pressure comes amid a devastating string of recent losses for the Democratic climate agenda.
A major tax and investment bill, which Democrats originally argued would bring the U.S. to the brink of President Biden’s emissions plans, is still wallowing on Capitol Hill as Congress departs for a two-week recess.
The EPA is waiting to propose a new regulation to crack down on power-plant emissions until the Supreme Court renders a decision in a suit that seeks to defang the agency. And Democrats, who just months ago chided fossil-fuel companies for increased oil output, are now exhorting the industry to produce more to bring down the price of gasoline.
For now, the Biden administration is sticking to its emissions goals, which it described last year as “both ambitious and achievable” in a Paris Agreement submission known as a Nationally Determined Contribution. But the path to reach those targets is increasingly unclear.
“I think it’s going to be challenging to implement the policies that are needed to achieve the NDC given the current political situation. There’s a lot of uncertainty still about whether the clean-energy components of Build Back Better might be moving separately in the Senate,” said Daniel Raimi, a clean-energy expert at Resources for the Future and lead author of a new study on the global energy transition.
“It’s really hard to see how we get there without new legislation,” Raimi said.
The House-passed Build Back Better bill lacks a regulatory mechanism to force utilities to phase out fossil fuels but authorizes roughly $550 billion in clean-energy tax incentives and other climate investments. Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, who scuttled the utility regulation before knifing the broader Build Back Better bill in December, is dangling the prospect of resuming negotiations to pass a new package under reconciliation rules that require only a majority vote in the Senate.
The legislative outcome is poised to shape the U.S. emissions trajectory for years to come, according to climate scientists.
“Only when we see what sort of climate provisions are included in a prospective spending bill will we be able to assess the extent to which the U.S. can make good on its NDC,” said Michael Mann, an author and professor who runs the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University. “The biggest challenge is a Republican Party that has opposed, tooth and nail, any and all efforts to act on the climate crisis.”
But the U.S. climate agenda is now running headlong against Democratic efforts to pare down record-high gas prices amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has claimed thousands of lives and roiled energy markets.
On top of trying to shame fossil-fuel companies into producing more oil, the primary tactic Democrats deployed at a House hearing Wednesday with industry executives, the administration is spearheading the largest-ever release of emergency crude stockpiles in an attempt to bring down prices. The U.S. plans to put 180 million barrels on the market in the next six months, and allies are releasing an additional 60 million barrels.
Oil combustion is a key contributor to climate-change-causing carbon-dioxide emissions. Atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels averaged nearly 420 parts per million globally in 2021, which marks a roughly 25 percent increase over the past 40 years, according to data from the Commerce Department.
Democrats say the high gas prices reinforce the need to deliver the promised U.S. emission reductions.
“Are we going to go through this every decade, the addiction to oil? The only way we’re going to avoid this ... is to act on clean energy,” House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis Chair Kathy Castor told National Journal. “These higher prices at the pump right now ... that’ll be a drop in the bucket compared to the enormous costs that we will face as the air around us warms and we suffer the consequences of this crisis.”
The Energy Department forecasts record-high U.S. oil production in 2023.
A United Nations report this week concluded that global greenhouse-gas emissions will need to peak before 2025 in order to keep temperature increase at levels necessary to avoid the most catastrophic climate forecasts. According to the International Energy Agency, energy-related carbon-dioxide emissions rose 6 percent in 2021, after dropping in 2020 when the pandemic ground global commerce.
The Carbon Map, a digital project created by the British firm Kiln, shows that the U.S. energy sector emitted more than 361 billion tons of carbon dioxide from 1850 to 2011, far more than any other country. Now the U.S. trails only China in emissions.
The Biden administration’s NDC says total U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions fell 17 percent between 2005 and 2020. Still, much of that is linked to the transition from coal to natural gas. Administration critics say the 2030 reduction targets are unrealistic.
“Congress has not authorized the NDC, and there is no authority in existing legislation, which is good because the U.S. will not come close to meeting it even if the political landscape changes and there is political support for cutting emissions,” said Myron Ebell, the top energy expert at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “Unless, of course, our looming recession turns into a deep depression, which it could, given the people in charge of economic policy.”
Capito echoed that position.
“They just say we’re going to get there, but they never tell you how and what kind of economic impact it’s going to have,” she told National Journal in an interview after the Regan hearing. “... They know they can’t do it without just bringing the economy to a halt.”
An EPA spokesman, Nick Conger, directed a question on more NDC details to the White House. “We continue to have a constructive dialogue with Senator Capito and her staff,” Conger said. Capito and other Republicans pushed the White House for details on the NDC in a letter last year. The White House never responded, according to Capito spokeswoman Kelley Moore.
A White House spokesman, Vedant Patel, declined to provide more NDC details.
Later this year, the Supreme Court will issue a ruling in a suit brought by the West Virginia attorney general that aims to restrict the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Facing a grilling from climate hawk Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse Wednesday, Regan said the agency will act on a new rule to regulate power-sector emissions after the ruling.
“We have this Supreme Court decision that we are keeping an eye on. We want to be sure that the rule that we design will fall within where the Supreme Court will land,” Regan said. “We’re going to be ready to go as soon as the Supreme Court rules.” The EPA issued a regulation in December to cap fuel-economy standards for passenger cars and light trucks, including sport-utility vehicles. Among other new regulations and proposals, the agency is also now regulating hydrofluorocarbons.
In November, world leaders will meet in Egypt for another U.N. climate conference. That event will kick off a day after the U.S. midterm elections, which appear to favor Republican opponents of aggressive climate legislation.
“I think there’s a lot of pessimism at the moment from different folks on what’s possible,” said Robbie Orvis, senior director of energy-policy design at the climate think tank Energy Innovation. “There’s still reason for considerable optimism. But we will hopefully know more within a few months depending on what Congress is or isn’t able to get passed.”