Vice President Biden Unveils Clean Energy Plan

Photo: Forbes

Any future energy plan proposed by either a politician (alone) or together (in Congress) needs to include a transition toward renewable energy.  To combat climate change, renewable energy will play an enormous role.  Not to mention the transition from fossil fuel to renewable energy involves job growth.  Job growth, which at the moment, sounds very good with millions of workers unemployed.



Reporting from Politico Energy sheds light on the newly unveiled energy plan by the 2020 Presidential Candidate - former Vice President Biden:

BIDEN'S REVAMPED CLEAN ENERGY PLAN: Trump's infrastructure changes come one day after Joe Biden unveiled his revamped clean energy plan, which would invest $2 trillion in four years on clean energy and set specific zero-emission targets, Pro's Zack Colman reports. "This is the single most comprehensive and ambitious climate plan ever advanced by a major presidential nominee," Sam Ricketts, Evergreen Action co-founder and the author of Gov. Jay Inslee's climate plan, said in a statement.

The details: The plan includes a zero-emissions goal for American-made buses by 2030; rebates to swap out older cars for electric, hybrid or hydrogen-fuel vehicles; a clean-electricity standard to neutralize power-sector emissions by 2035; and programs employing 250,000 people to plug abandoned oil and gas wells and reclaim mines. The Biden campaign also released an environmental justice plan that calls for creating an environmental justice and climate division within the Justice Department.

Biden pitched his plan as a job creator. "When Donald Trump thinks about climate change, the only word he can muster is 'hoax,'" he said Tuesday. "When I think about climate change, the word I think of is 'jobs.'"

In a potential preview of the president's line of attack during a Trump-Biden debate, Trump took aim at Biden's zero-emissions targets. "I hope you don't mind cold office space in the winter and warm office space in the summer, because your air conditioning is not the same as the good old days," Trump said Tuesday of Biden's 2030 zero-emissions building target. Biden also "wants no petroleum product," Trump claimed, which he tied to jobs in Texas, Pennsylvania, North Dakota and Oklahoma.

SPEAKING OF ZERO-EMISSIONS: Fifteen states and the District of Columbia said Tuesday they'd work together to speed up the deployment of zero-emission medium- and heavy-duty trucks and buses, setting a target of 100 percent zero-emission sales by 2050, your ME host reports for Pros.

After reading the above reporting, the transition to renewable energy along with combatting climate change might still seem far away.  Especially, since former Vice President Joe Biden is a candidate for the upcoming elections.  Although, reporters from various news sources over the last few years have been writing about the transition.  Which is gaining momentum.



The change of one chamber in Congress was the first sign.  Although, momentum had been building before that over the years.  Now add into the equation grants from silicon valley to support transitions too.  Again, reporting from Politico Energy suggests that the tide is turning from fossil fuels and toward clean energy:

TECH TURNS TO CLIMATE: Tech companies and environmental research organizations are launching a joint effort today to build a computing tool, called Climate TRACE, that uses artificial intelligence to track greenhouse gases, Pro's Zack Colman reports. The effort is designed to create an international inventory of the biggest drivers of climate change so governments and companies can whittle down their emissions.

The partnership was developed in part with a philanthropic grant from Google and aided by the company's computing support. Providing real-time data on emissions will ease fears that countries will cheat on reporting their emissions, said former Vice President Al Gore, whose investment fund Generation Investment Management LLP donated $3 million to developing the effort.

"The real breakthrough here is in artificial intelligence and machine learning and combining dozens of different data streams to derive an accurate number for real-time emissions from every significant source in the world," he told POLITICO.

The momentum building up behind the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy has been growing over the last few years.  Previous blog posts (see below -- Related Blog Posts) have been written about the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy by big oil companies too. 



That in of itself should signal a transition.  How large of a transition or the speed of the transition remains to be seen.  Although, the ship is turning toward the transition -- which is a good sign.  Change is on the front lines toward renewable energy.



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