The new Biden administration launched a series of legislative and regulatory proposals 15 months ago to protect the environment and transform major sectors of the American economy. The reality is that environmental sustainability issues now occupy a crossfire within the nation’s political conflicts leading to another election cycle.
Under the noise and fury, there were many important decisions. There are also a growing number of unfulfilled promise and an increasing realization about how quickly political capital can disappear. This is especially true in Capitol Hill, where there are two equally divided U.S. Senates and where Democrats expect to lose their House of Representatives after the 2022 midterm elections. Separate pincer movements led in part by Sen. Joe Manchins, a West Virginia Democrat, have been a major obstacle to Joe Biden’s expansive and expensive Build Back Better program. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has also hampered Bidens efforts at reducing the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions to 50% by 2030. As global energy supplies become tighter and inflation rises, slowing such emissions has become more difficult. This has led to the administration supporting short-term oil and gas production increases.
The Biden administration’s environmental sustainability agenda for one year can be categorized into three main buckets: restoration from square one, new initiatives, and adaptation strategies.
The new is here: A return to square one
The March 22 Washington Posts analysis on Biden’s environmental actions revealed that “the story about Bidens first-year in office is not just one of doing, it is also one of undoing.” The U.S. federal agencies have spent a lot of time over the past year to reverse 77 Trump-era decisions and target 93 more. This work involved analyzing previous administrations decisions, developing scientific, economic, and legal reasons for replacing them. Rewriting new policy proposals was also required.
Major policy reversals include: re-imposing methane emissions controls; cancelling Keystone XL’s pipeline; restoring Californias Clean Air Act waiver to set stricter air pollution standards than federal government; rescinding previous administrations scientific “transparency rule” that limited the use scientific evidence to establish environmental standards; exorcising Trumps withdrawing of the Obama Environmental Protection Agencys Clean Power Plan, which reduces greenhouse gasses from utilities; and instituting tougher energy efficiency standards According to the Washington Posts environmental tracker analysis of March, 75 percent or more of Trump’s deregulation decisions have been targeted by the Biden administration.
The Biden administration’s environmental sustainability agenda one year in can be analyzed in three major buckets: restoration from square one, new initiatives, and adaptation strategies.
With the new
Although not always supported in court or able to withstand pressures from Capitol Hill and industry groups, the Biden administration has implemented a wide range of new environmental-energy initiatives. These are the result of new funding approved by Congress in annual Appropriations Bills, the 2021 bipartisan Infrastructure legislation, and an assertion of executive powers across a variety if statutes. It is especially important to mobilize a wide range of executive branch agencies that previously played a secondary role on environmental policy.
Notable initiatives include:
- An Energy Department Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations funds $20 billion in innovative climate technologies
- $15 billion allocated to replace copper and lead drinking water pipes
- $5 billion investment in electric vehicle charging stations
- Weatherize homes with $3.2 billion
- $1 billion allocated for Great Lakes Restoration
- Establishing a reporting system to identify sources and quantities of PFAS, “forever chemicals”,
- For passenger cars and light duty trucks, higher fuel economy standards are mandatory
- It is proposed that 40% of federal sustainability investment be dedicated to disadvantaged areas
- The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was tasked with conducting a comprehensive review of the environmental impacts of a proposed Formosa Plastics plant in Louisiana near historically black communities.
- Monitoring chemical plant emissions at the lower Mississippi River
- The Securities and Exchange Commission proposes a new requirement that publicly traded companies disclose the level of financial risk from Climate Change.
- announcing a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (subsequently modified by objections from Republicans, Manchin, and pipeline companies) to review climate impact from new pipelines.
Promoting adaptation strategies
To implement an ambitious environmental sustainability agenda that includes infrastructure funding, regulatory policies proposals, legal filings, scientific assessments, and funding for regulatory policy, it is necessary to rebuild the financial and staff capabilities of the federal government.
The severe reductions in funding and scientific staff at agencies like EPA pose a significant challenge. There will be a shortage in skilled personnel across many agencies, which must evaluate, process and execute grants to state and local governments as well as other funding recipients.
The Biden administration must account for its diminished political influence in Capitol Hill and the ongoing need to rebuild core competencies, budgets, and core competencies. It will need to devise several adaptation strategies to move forward its agenda. They include:
- Continue to hit singles, doubles, and triples.It is unrealistic to think that the Biden administration will introduce any new proposals that would need to be approved by Congress at this stage in the political calendar. It will be better to take in what it has already been given, despite facing greater political headwinds. It has the legal authority to do so. It can provide tangible evidence that government is providing essential health and environmental benefits by updating the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Particulate Matter 2.5 and Ozone.
- Encourage market-scale collaboration with the private sectors In the absence of regulation, a lot of the progress in decarbonizing our economy and reducing other pollution sources comes from the private sector. The private sector has been able to accelerate efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the supply chains of global corporations, decrease single-use plastics and their precursor chemicals by taking actions across the entire plastics value chain, and collaborate on data analytics for environmental decision making. These and other private sector initiatives lack a governance process that sets minimum performance standards and provides transparency about results to stop “free riders” companies from avoiding these commitments. This is a role that is tailored to the capabilities government agencies that can also gain a deeper knowledge about market innovations as they complement the actions taken by leading companies.
- Innovative policy frameworks to support a new economy.The American economy is changing. The decarbonization and transition away form internal combustion engine technologies, modernization and modernization in the electricity grid, and the introduction of smart technologies to lower energy and water consumption are all years away from market-wide scale. However, it is already clear that the existing regulatory process must be repurposed for the new economic system. There are many collaboration opportunities to create new policy frameworks with the private and non-governmental sectors, state and local agencies as well as academia and minority and Indigenous communities. This will require joint research, the development of new policies tools (including those that leverage consumer behavior and economic incentives) and innovations to grow a more equitable economy.
Two major decisions will be made later this year regarding the future environmental sustainability agenda: the midterm November elections which will determine control of Congress for the next 2 years and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in West Virginia v Environmental Protection Agency.
The court will review delegated statutory authority that EPA, and other federal agencies use for regulation of pollution. A decision is expected before June. The outcome will decide whether Congress needs to revise existing statutes to grant agencies more regulatory power. This decision will have a significant legal and political impact on environmental policymaking.
Biden’s administration is keeping its fingers crossed that the conservative majority of the court will follow established legal precedents, giving agency decisions wide discretion on implementing current laws and not throwing out an environmental law or regulatory playbook that has been in place for nearly 40+ years.
Depending on their outcome, the midterm election results and Supreme Court decision have direct potential to sink Biden’s environmental sustainability agenda for the rest of his term and for many years to come.
