Clean energy and electric vehicle incentives are being cut from the US president’s flagship $2 trillion American jobs plan to win conservative support A man paddles during Hurricane Harvey in Houston in 2017. (Photo: Mannie Garcia/Greenpeace) Joe Biden’s climate ambition risks being significantly downgraded as the US president seeks Republican support to pass his flagship infrastructure bill. Biden appears to lack the party unity to push through his promised $2 trillion American jobs plan, with conservative Democrats like West Virginia’s Joe Manchin withholding support. A cross-party group of senators is working on a scaled down infrastructure bill, to bring Manchin on board and the ten Republican votes needed to get it past the Senate without resorting to a controversial process called budget reconciliation. This bipartisan package is worth $1.2trn, of which just $579 billion is new spending. That means axing or scaling down several measures to support clean energy and electric vehicles. As a result, at least four climate-conscious Democratic senators are threatening to revolt, including Bernie Sanders, Ed Markey and Sheldon Whitehouse. World Resources Institute researcher Joel Jaeger told Climate Home News Biden’s original proposal matched the ambition of US climate targets: a 50-52% emissions cut from 2005 levels by 2030 and net zero by 2050. “The bipartisan proposal at this point does not,” he said. “This year is the last best chance for America to pass major climate legislation,” he added. According to Jaeger’s analysis, at least half of Biden’s $2tn bill was to go on sectors under the broad umbrella of climate change, clean energy and environmental justice. The bipartisan proposal is vague, he said, estimating just under $400bn of the $579bn can be categorised as green. Conservatives generally oppose the price tag of Biden’s... |