Environmental policy of the Joe Biden administration
[14][15] Additionally, the Biden administration delivered a tax plan to Congress aiming to replace fossil fuel subsidies, with incentives for green energy.
[25] In August 2022, Biden signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which includes the largest federal climate change investment in American history.
[49] On the first day of his presidency, Biden signed an order directing a return to the Obama-era policy of taking into account the social cost of carbon when implementing new regulations, a practice that the Trump administration had abandoned in 2017.
[60] A group of experts at the REPEAT Project said that the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act alone could make only a small reduction in emissions, but they didn't count the impact of measures regarding highways and public transport.
[63] In August 2022, President Biden signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate investment by the U.S. federal government in history, which included over $391 billion to reduce carbon emissions.
[78] Nonprofit entities, state and local governments, and electric cooperatives were allotted more stable and secure funding for such projects than previously, without having to seek institutional investors for help.
[78] The law was predicted to slash global greenhouse gas emissions in a manner similar to "eliminating the annual planet-warming pollution of France and Germany combined" and was seen as a helpful measure in limiting the warming of the planet by 1.5 °C—the target of the Paris Agreement.
[92] Modeling from the nonpartisan research institution Resources for the Future indicated that the bill would decrease retail power costs by 5.2% to 6.7% over a 10-year period, resulting in savings of $170 to $220 per year for the average U.S. household.
[149][150] In March 2021, the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) of the U.S. Labor Department announced that it would review and not enforce a Trump administration final rule for fiduciaries in proxy voting under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) to consider pecuniary interests only and not environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) factors in investments for 401(k)s pursuant to Executive Order 13990.
[169] In March, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) issued a request for public comment on draft guidance for CRM for financial institutions with over $100 billion in assets.
[186][187] In November, the FIO submitted its home and property insurance data collection request to the Office of Management and Budget for review and clearance under the Paperwork Reduction Act.
[191][192][193] In May, the Federal Reserve released a summary of the results of the pilot exercise analysis; it found that the participating banks had significant modeling difficulties due to a lack comprehensive and consistent data on building characteristics, insurance coverage, and counter-party CRM policies.
[194][195] In December 2022, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it was seeking public comment until February 21, 2023 for potential revisions to agency guidelines made pursuant to Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 for preventing deceptive green marketing practices for claims about carbon offsets, compostability, biodegradability, oxo-biodegradability, photodegradability, ozone safety, recyclability, recycled content, energy use and energy efficiency, organic products, and sustainability.
[218][219][220] In remarks made by video conference to the European Parliament Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs in September, SEC Chair Gary Gensler stated that the agency was preparing recommendations for new disclosure requirements for ESG investment funds.
[226] In November, the SEC rescinded a Trump administration rule issued in 2017 which permitted company managers to exclude ESG proposals from shareholders in annual proxy statements.
[list 7] In the same month, Deutsche Bank agreed to extend the term of an external compliance monitor until February 2023, from its 2015 settlement with the Justice Department, in order to address its failure to disclose the internal ESG complaint from its former chief sustainability officer the previous August.
[272][273] In remarks made after a speech given at Yale Law School in February of 2024, Gensler stated that the climate disclosure rule was being drafted to withstand judicial scrutiny.
[288][289] Under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that Biden later signed into law later that November, an additional $12 billion appropriation was made for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) projects.
[290] In May 2022, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $3.5 billion program funded under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to create four large-scale regional direct air capture (DAC) hubs, each consisting of a network of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) projects.
[291][292] Under the CHIPS and Science Act that Biden signed into law later that August, a $1 billion appropriation was included to fund CDR research, development, and deployment.
The plan for achieving the target was called "America the Beautiful" and included many measures like expanding urban green spaces and collaboration with indigenous people.
[324] In January of that year, President Biden halted further development of the Keystone Pipeline by way of an executive order which also directed agencies to review and reverse more than 100 Trump administration actions on the environment.
[329] In January of 2024, Biden's administration announced a pause in the approval of projects linked to the export of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to countries which were not members of free trade agreements with the U.S. until the environmental impacts were fully reviewed.
However, Republicans and the fossil fuel industry showed support for the threatened projects, stating they would be needed for the U.S. economy and security, especially due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
[335] In response to reviews, the Interior Department stopped many of the oil and gas drilling projects, took measures for the protection of wild animals, and restored national monuments.
On September 17, energy companies, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell, bid $192 million for drilling rights on federal gas and oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico.
[340][341] In January of 2022, a federal judge remanded the lease auction back to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for relying on a distorted Trump-era environmental impact assessment.
Support of EV use, walking and cycling, and prioritizing maintenance of existing roads instead of building new ones, among other efforts, were proposed as measures to achieve the needed reduction.
[376][377] The administration spent many efforts on enhancing cooperation with the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, among others, by creating a consultation mechanism for assuring their voice would be heard for environmental justice initiatives.
[410] In 2024, several environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club, Sunrise Movement, and Earthjustice, issued a memorandum stating that Biden did more for the environment than any other president in history; they presented a list of 322 actions made by the administration to achieve the goal.
