Biden’s First Year in Office: A Strong Start to Laying the Groundwork

January 20 marked one year for the Biden administration. Facing a host of crises, the administration got to work laying the groundwork for Biden’s ambitious agenda. This was particularly true when it comes to addressing the climate crisis.

Within hours of taking the oath of office, President Biden issued nearly a dozen executive orders, actions, and reviews to protect our clean air and water and address the climate crisis, including:

• Rejecting the Keystone XL Pipeline

• Rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement

• Announcing a review of Endangered Species Act rollbacks

• Announcing a review of Trump’s attacks on National Monuments

• Executing a moratorium on oil and gas operations in the Arctic Refuge

• And issuing a slew of executive actions spanning the entire government, including:

• Reviewing and resolving harmful anti-environmental actions taken by the Trump administration. 

• Directing federal agencies to begin a process to cut methane pollution, safeguarding communities

• Reestablishing the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases and directing the issuance of an interim social cost of carbon to account for the full costs of emissions, including climate risk, and carbon’s potential to exacerbate environmental injustice and intergenerational inequity. 

A week later, President Biden built on his efforts by taking historic and significant executive action to marshal the entire federal government to address the climate crisis in a just and equitable manner. This effort included:

• Taking bold action on environmental justice 

• Creation of a first-of-its-kind White House interagency council to develop clear performance metrics to promote accountability around environmental justice;

• Installation of environmental justice officers at all federal agencies to prepare a report of recommendations on how Executive Order 12898 can be strengthened and updated;

• Creation of an external environmental justice council to identify reforms to achieve equity and inclusion in federal policy making, ensuring that environmental justice communities have a voice at the policy table;

• Orders to the Environmental Protection Agency to recommit to enforcing the nation’s pollution laws, especially those that impact communities of color;

• A commitment that forty percent of the benefits from relevant federal investments will be targeted toward communities impacted by environmental injustice.

• Establishing the Civilian Climate Corps, which offers well-paying jobs to younger Americans to work conserving and restoring public lands, waters, and forests and addressing climate change.

• Pausing oil and gas leasing on public lands

• Setting a goal of protecting 30 percent of public lands and waters by 2030

• Centering climate action in the US’s foreign policy and national security

As the Biden administration’s work continued, President Biden maneuvered a massive piece of legislation through Congress: the American Rescue Plan Act. This critical piece of legislation provided funds to implement the president’s plan, including more than $12.7 billion for climate and environmental justice priorities like energy and water bill assistance, environmental justice grants, air quality monitoring, and community health centers.

When President Biden came into office, he had a daunting task ahead of him: to undo the work of the worst president ever for clean air, clean water, and a livable climate; advance climate solutions; and rebuild morale at the departments and agencies charged with carrying out his work. This was not an overnight task, and much work remains to rebuild agency capacity and funding after years of damage caused by Trump and Congressional Republicans. 

Biden quickly addressed a number of key campaign promises, and as the year went on, his administration began work on a number of actions critical for protecting our clean air, water, and communities, which we look forward to seeing finalized in 2022. 

Over the course of his first year in office, Biden and his administration have acted on the following:

Pollution:

• The Environmental Protection Agency reinstated its 2015 policy prohibiting startup, shutdown, and malfunction clean air loopholes for polluters in 36 states, an important step toward clean air for all.

• The EPA announced it will reconsider air quality standards for ozone — which has the potential to greatly reduce smog pollution — and particulate matter (soot), which had been left unacceptably high by the previous administration.

• In a critical move, the EPA released new draft rules to curb methane emissions and other pollution from the oil and gas industry. Methane is emitted alongside other harmful pollution that puts communities at risk of serious negative health effects. 

• A new EPA rule for federal clean car standards will curb emissions from the transportation sector and protect the public health and address climate crisis by strengthening the stringency for model years 2023 through 2026 for cars and light-duty trucks

Public Lands:

• The Biden administration made great strides, via the 30x30 initiative, in undoing some of President Trump's anti-conservation policies. including restoring the boundaries of Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante, Northeast Canyon and Seamounts national monuments, along with protecting lands around Chaco Canyon and in the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge from drilling.

• The Department of the Interior released a report calling for reforms of the current fossil fuel leasing program on public lands and offshore. 

• President Biden announced important steps the administration is taking to better recognize Tribal sovereignty and protect the rights of Indigenous communities. 

Clean Energy:

• The Biden administration announced an auction for lease areas to develop up to 7 gigawatts (GW) of new offshore wind in the New York Bight, marking major progress toward President Biden’s goal of developing 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030.

• Biden rounded out the year by committing to use the federal government’s vast purchasing power to drive demand for clean energy goods, by converting the federal government to 100 percent clean energy and electric vehicles, weatherizing and electrifying federal buildings, and launching a new Buy Clean policy to cut pollution from steel, concrete, and other emissions-intensive construction materials 

Environmental Justice:

• The Biden administration committed to delivering at least 40 percent of climate, clean energy, and relevant infrastructure investment benefits to disadvantaged communities via executive order 14008l. In July, The White House released Justice40 interim implementation guidelines and identified 21 federal programs that will pilot the initial Justice40 implementation. 

• The administration also made progress in addressing environmental injustice by:

• Working on a Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool to identify disadvantaged communities.

• Establishing an Environmental and Climate Justice Division within the US Department of Justice. 

• Working to secure the benefits coal miners and their families have earned by establishing a Task Force on Coal and Power Plant Communities.

• Reinstating the annual White House Tribal Nations Conference and leveraging the White House Council on Native American Affairs.

• Overhauling the EPA External Civil Rights Compliance Office .

• Establishing an Interagency Climate Equity Task Force.

• Ensuring the US Department of Agriculture ends historical discrimination against Black farmers in federal farm programs and that all socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers have access to programs that support their family farms.

President Biden has issued bold executive orders and actions in his first year in office, laying out a broad and ambitious agenda he first detailed on the campaign trail. However, there were critical issues— in particular, stopping the expansion of oil and gas pipelines and leasing our public lands to corporate polluters—where the Biden administration has failed to meet this moment of climate crisis. In the past year, the Biden administration failed to act on the Line 3 and Dakota Access pipelines – going so far as to maintain the Trump administration’s position – permitting these dangerous and destructive projects to continue to endanger Tribal sovereignty and critical waterways. Furthermore, this administration has turned the country into the largest exporter of fracked gas, fumbled easy opportunities to reinstate the Obama-era federal coal leasing moratorium and to analyze the damage caused by coal production on federal lands— which accounts for 11 percent of all US greenhouse gas pollution—and allowed utilities to violate clean air rules designed to keep coal pollution out of our national parks.

But this administration still has time, and a laundry list of actions it can and must take. This begins with the Senate finally passing Biden’s proposal to cut costs for families, create a social safety net for every person, protect our clean air and water, grow the burgeoning clean energy economy, and build the country back better. 

Biden must also ensure Congress passes his budget. For his first year in office, President Biden was limited by Trump’s budget, which defunded key agencies, like the EPA. His administration did not have the funding  to take action on climate, safeguard communities, and protect our public lands and waters at the level necessary.

In 2021, the administration laid the groundwork for some of the most ambitious climate and environmental protections in history. Now it must get to work making those protections a reality by advancing and finalizing dozens of actions. These actions include:

• Prioritizing rescinding Donald Trump’s climate guidance

• Close startup, shutdown, malfunction loopholes across the entire Clean Air Act

• Take action on rules addressing carbon pollution from power plants

• Finalize and strengthen the Mercury Air Toxics Standards

• Move forward with strong standards for both heavy- and light-duty (post model year 2026) vehicles and reinstate the California waiver

• Reduce haze-causing pollution from coal plants to protect our National Parks and wilderness areas

• Strengthen the particulate matter (soot) and ozone standards to protect public health and air quality

• Implement cross-state air pollution rules to reduce ozone pollution in downwind states 

• Strengthen standards for pollution controls to eliminate wastewater discharges from coal plants and close leaking coal ash ponds

• Finalize robust rules that achieve a 65 percent reduction in methane pollution from all new and existing oil and gas operations by 2025.

• Adopt strong federal clean water protections, consistent with the Clean Water Act, to protect streams, wetlands, and lakes

• Finalizing a strong climate and environmental justice screening tool, justice 40 pilot programs and making progress on priorities highlighted above. 

President Biden campaigned and was elected on the boldest climate and environmental platform seen to date. Despite several critical failures, his administration has been nothing short of historic in the bold actions taken. But stopping now is not an option. There is too much work left to be done. Our clean air and water, our communities, and our collective future depends on President Biden cementing himself as the Climate President.