by Elizabeth Ahearn, Atlantic Chapter Conservation Staff
The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report, released on August 9, 2021, unequivocally concludes that climate change is widespread, rapid, and intensifying (1). The same week the IPCC Report was released, the U.S. Senate passed a historic bipartisan Infrastructure bill focused on investments in roads, railways, bridges, and broadband internet, with some funds allocated to replacing lead drinking water pipes, building charging stations for electric vehicles, and funding electric transit and school buses. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act calls for $1 trillion in overall spending, including $550 billion in new spending, but it still needs to pass the House of Representatives and get signed by President Biden.
Following the infrastructure vote, the Senate also voted 50-49 to begin debate on a separate spending measure, a $3.5 trillion Reconciliation spending package including federal investments in childcare, family leave, education, housing, and green energy initiatives. Presented solely as a budget item, the $3.5 trillion Reconciliation bill would allow for the passage of the spending measure by a simple majority vote, instead of the 60 votes required to pass most legislation in the Senate.
Many progressive Democrats have stated they won’t vote for the smaller Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act before the $3.5 trillion Reconciliation spending program is passed, as many initiatives are vastly underfunded or missing from the Infrastructure bill. The Sierra Club supports the stance that any vote on the bipartisan Infrastructure proposal must be preceded by passage of the Reconciliation bill. The budget Reconciliation bill is a crucial step toward delivering bold investments at a national level, and it will help us tackle the climate crisis, create millions of jobs, and fight economic, racial, environmental, and gender injustice.
Everyone deserves access to family-sustaining jobs, healthy food, the outdoors, clean affordable transportation, energy, and water. Sierra Club’s top priorities concerning the Reconciliation legislation are listed below. A detailed explanation of each priority can be found here.
1. Achieve 100% Clean Energy with a Clean Energy Payment Program (CEPP) & Clean Energy Tax Incentives
CEPP: Polling shows strong public support for policies like the Clean Energy Payment Plan (2). The CEPP, which complements tax incentives for clean energy, will issue grants to and collect payments from electricity suppliers from 2023 through 2030 based on how much qualified clean electricity each supplier provides to customers. An electricity supplier will be eligible for a grant if it increases the amount of clean electricity it supplies to customers by 4% compared to the previous year. The grant will be $150 for each megawatt-hour of clean electricity above 1.5% of the previous year’s clean electricity.
Clean energy tax incentives: Bold investments in solar, on- and offshore wind, storage, transmission, efficient buildings, EVs, disadvantaged communities, strong labor standards, and domestic manufacturing are essential.
Grid resilience: The bipartisan infrastructure bill offers $10 billion in grants for grid resiliency. This amount is insufficient, and the reconciliation package should supplement it.
2. Expand Access to Clean Public Transit, Union-built Electric Vehicles, and EV Charging Infrastructure
The transportation sector is the leading source of carbon pollution in the United States.
The bipartisan infrastructure deal is a good starting point. The Sierra Club urges Congress to pass a reconciliation bill with significant additional investments for electrifying cars, transit buses, school buses, the federal fleet including the U.S. postal fleet and ports, while including domestic manufacturing and high labor standards to ensure that U.S. workers are not left behind as we rapidly transition to electric vehicles.
The Sierra Club supports investing in public transit that runs on renewable energy and policies that get us to 100% pollution-free cars, trucks, and buses. We endorse Leader Schumer and Senator Brown’s Clean Transit for America Plan, Senator Warren’s BUILD Green Infrastructure and Jobs Act, as well as Rep. Ocasio Cortez’s & Rep Levin’s EV Freedom Act.
3. End Fossil Fuel Subsidies
- The 20 largest fossil fuel companies account for more than one third of current global greenhouse gas emissions, and American taxpayers subsidize their industry at a rate of $15 billion annually.
- In 2020 alone, oil, gas, and coal interests spent more than $115 million lobbying Congress in defense of these subsidies, generating a return on investment of over 13,000%.
- The Sierra Club supports repealing the billions in special interest subsidies that help fuel the oil, gas, and coal industries. Government subsidies should also be ended for plastics, research for “carbon capture and sequestration,” and research for mixing of hydrogen into natural gas as a way of extending the use of fossil fuels over the longer term.
4. Replace 100% of Lead Pipes
The bipartisan deal is slated to include enough funding to replace only 25% of lead pipes. Congress needs to deliver more funding in the reconciliation package to achieve Biden's goal of 100% lead pipe replacement.
President Biden’s original American Jobs Plan placed a strong focus on addressing toxic lead in our water by requiring the replacement of 100% of the nation’s lead pipes and service lines in our drinking water systems. The plan requires an upgrade and modernization of America’s drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater systems, while tackling new contaminants and supporting clean water infrastructure across rural America.
The final reconciliation bill should preserve the Infrastructure Bill’s funding for low-income disadvantaged communities as defined in the Safe Drinking Water Act, as well as environmental justice communities.
5. Retrofit and Electrify all Public Housing, Schools, and Hospitals
The reconciliation package needs to invest hundreds of billions of dollars to produce, preserve, and retrofit affordable housing and public schools that run on clean electricity, as opposed to natural gas. This includes investing over $170 billion to improve two million public housing units and over $400 billion to upgrade public schools nationwide.
Sen. Heinrich has introduced the Electrifying America’s Future Resolution, which calls for widespread electrification of appliances in homes, schools and businesses. This is an opportunity to use already-proven heat pump and electric hot water heating technology to decarbonize buildings, while creating millions of good-paying jobs in communities across the country. The Sierra Club urges inclusion and expansion of these policies in the final reconciliation bill.
6. Create a Civilian Climate Corps
There is an immense amount of work required to build a more just and resilient clean energy economy. Millions of workers will need to be hired in communities to protect and restore forests and wetlands, support community repairs after storms and floods, expand access to renewable energy, weatherize buildings, install electric vehicle charging stations, and more. The Sierra Club supports a $60 billion outlay for the Civilian Climate Corps.
The $3.5 trillion budget resolution package has the potential to be the most monumental investment in tackling the climate crisis in U.S. history. It would help put our country on the right path to meet President Biden’s climate goals of 80% clean electricity and 50% economy-wide carbon emissions reductions by 2030, while also delivering 40% of the investments to disadvantaged communities. As scientific findings and subsequent warnings from the latest IPCC Report demonstrate, it is essential that Congress embrace this historic opportunity to make significant investments that will benefit us both now and in the future. By supporting an ambitious infrastructure package with strong climate components at the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, the U.S. can show its leadership and commitment on a global scale.
Notes:
(1) https://www.ipcc.ch/2021/08/09/ar6-wg1-20210809-pr/
(2) https://www.filesforprogress.org/memos/voters-support-a-clean-electricity-standard.pdf