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Key climate initiatives that missed the cut in the White House’s infrastructure compromise announced last week should be non-negotiable in the next legislative effort, Biden’s domestic climate adviser Gina McCarthy said Wednesday.
McCarthy said at a Punchbowl News forum that a mandate that could require utilities to generate clean electricity and a tax-credit extension valued at hundreds of billions for wind, solar and other renewable energy industries
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will be given fresh life in the so-called budget reconciliation procedure that avoids a Republican filibuster in the Senate. The Democrats enjoy a slim Senate majority.
Biden and the White House climate-change team put on a full-court press Wednesday as they met with governors of Western states suffering under a deadly heat that is aggravating drought and wildfire conditions in California, Oregon, Washington and elsewhere. Scientists point to the effects of climate change in turning typical weather patterns into more severe events. That includes hurricanes, and in the West, wildfires. Temperatures smashed records in Portland and Seattle in recent days as a heat dome moved in and hovered over the area.
“We do have some bottom lines in this,” McCarthy said of the budget reconciliation during the forum. “We need to make sure we are sending a signal we want renewable energy and it will win in the marketplace.”
Related: A guide to budget reconciliation, which Democrats could use to push Biden’s agenda
In addition to McCarthy’s policy push Wednesday, EPA Administrator Michael Regan separately stressed the importance of meeting climate-change needs in the reconciliation round. His joined the White House daily press briefing for a pitch that included $55 billion in already-proposed spending plans for lead-pipe conversion to improve drinking water, but also talked of the necessity of keeping up the dialogue with the suffering West. The region now has some rolling power blackouts in place. Earlier, Biden announced a boost in pay for federal firefighters who are bracing for another tough wildfire season after a deadly and expensive 2020.
Read: Amid dry hillsides and catastrophic fires, California tests off-the-grid solutions to power outages
Western governors had a chance to plead their case to Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris Wednesday.
“[The bipartisan infrastructure bill] isn’t half a climate bill. It isn’t 10% of a climate bill. We need a real climate bill that has to come through reconciliation…nothing else is acceptable,” Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said on MSNBC this week. Inslee, a Democrat and former presidential hopeful, was among the state leadership who had Biden’s ear at the drought and heat special session.
The $579 billion infrastructure deal announced last week by Biden and a group of Democratic and Republican senators doesn’t include a mandate sought by the White House that could have required utilities to produce power only from carbon-free sources. The measure, known as a Clean Energy Standard, is considered by environmental watchers as a key policy piece if Biden is to have a chance at achieving his lofty goal to slash U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030.
“While there are some necessary provisions in the bipartisan [infrastructure] proposal, it does not act on climate at the scale that science and justice require or meet the commitments that the Biden-Harris administration made to act on climate and environmental justice,” League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski said. “Moving forward on this bipartisan framework alone would send a message to communities across the country that their future is not important.”
Karpinski and other climate groups have said a budget reconciliation package must include investments to cut U.S. emissions by at least half by 2030 and put the nation on the path to 100% carbon-free energy to power the electricity grid, new cars and buses, as well as buildings by 2035.
