Vice President Kamala Harris will accept the Democratic nomination for president Thursday on the back of a historic four years for climate action. But if she wins the election, it begins a race to meet the country’s climate commitments during her term.
And she’s already behind.
Passage of the bipartisan infrastructure law, the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPs Act under President Joe Biden provided billions of dollars to accelerate clean energy projects.
Harris owns a unique part of that story. It was her vote that broke a deadlock in the Senate and secured passage of the IRA in 2022.
But the early returns from the Biden years have been decidedly mixed.
Wind and solar produced more electricity than coalthrough the first seven months of the year. Americans are purchasing more electric vehicles. New factories are making EVs, solar panels and batteries for the power grid.
Yet the country’s climate targets are slowly slipping away.
While wind, solar and battery projects have continued to grow in the U.S., clean energy installations have been tempered by high interest rates, supply chain bottlenecks and transmission constraints. Natural gas production is booming, powering more of the country than ever and driving a wave of fossil fuel exports. Many of the green industrial factories announced after the IRA’s passage have been delayed and could be canceled altogether.
Three recent analyses show the pace of U.S. carbon cutting is likely to double over the next five years, thanks to laws like the IRA. But none of them expect the country to reduce emissions 50 percent of 2005 levels by 2030, the commitment the U.S. made under the Paris climate accord.
“The window is closing,” said Robbie Orvis, an analyst who tracks emissions trends at Energy Innovation, a nonpartisan clean energy research group that has influenced Democrats’ thinking on climate policy.
It comes less than 90 days before voters will choose between Harris and former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee who has rejected the effects of climate change. Last week, he told Tesla CEO Elon Musk that a warming planet might be beneficial because it could create more oceanfront property.
Trump has pledged to roll back carbon dioxide regulations on power plants, labeled the IRA the “Green New Scam” and derided climate science.
When Energy Innovation modeled the United States’ potential emission trajectories, it found that carbon levels would be about 18 percent higher in 2030 if the country abandoned its current policies in favor of those included in Project 2025, the policy blueprint written by conservative activists and former Trump aides. Trump has sought to distance himself from the plan, which calls for repealing the IRA, easing regulations on fossil fuel production and ending Energy Department programs intended to bolster emerging technologies.
U.S. emissions are on track to be 37 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, Energy Innovation found, meaning that Harris would inherit climate policies that are failing to meet U.S. goals. The U.S. could reduce emissions further if it implemented policies like new pollution regulations on natural gas-fired power plants or if it adopts a clean electricity standard, the group said.
“It is important to very quickly get the policies in place that can achieve the necessary reductions,” Orvis said.
Those findings echo the conclusions of the Repeat Project, an academic initiative that models emissions. It found that U.S. emissions would fall by just 7 percent in 2030 if the country returned to the policies enacted before Biden assumed the White House in 2021. By contrast, it estimates U.S. emissions will fall 32 percent to 34 percent if Harris continued the policies implemented by Biden.
Harris would have little time to put in place a policy agenda to meet the 2030 commitment, said Jesse Jenkins, a Princeton University professor who leads the Repeat Project and helped advise Democratic lawmakers on crafting the IRA.
But there are more opportunities to accelerate emission reductions after 2030 as more clean energy comes online, people buy more electric vehicles and new technologies become available to address emissions from sectors like industry, he said.
“That’s something that the Harris administration will certainly be focused on as a key part of its priorities, and it’s something that the Trump administration will not be,” Jenkins said.
U.S. emissions have trended down slightly over the last two decades, as the combination of stagnant electricity demand, cheap natural gas and renewables drove coal offline. But emissions have ridden a roller coaster in recent years, plummeting during the pandemic, then rebounding after lockdowns lifted, before declining slightly last year. Energy-related emissions are expected to plateau this year, according to federal government forecasts.
The Rhodium Group, a consulting firm, estimates U.S. greenhouse gas emissions were 5.4 billion tons last year, or 18 percent below 2005 levels. U.S. emissions would fall between 32 and 43 percent by 2030 under current policies, it predicts.
Not all analysts think the election will impact the country’s emissions trajectory. Emissions have steadily declined under Democratic and Republican administrations, said David Cherney, who tracks the power industry at PA Consulting. Trends outside a president’s control often have greater bearing on emissions, he noted.
Renewable generation continued to grow under Trump, as liberal states adopted a series of increasingly ambitious targets for wind and solar. Corporate climate commitments have slowed under Biden, and investors are showing renewed willingness to finance natural gas projects amid concerns about the reliability of the electric grid.
Companies have continued to close deals for new wind, solar or gas projects, a contrast to previous election years when investors waited to make final decisions about projects until the votes were tallied, Cherney said.
“That lack of a slowdown from people who are putting billions of dollars at risk I think helps reinforce, at least in my mind, that regardless of who sits in the White House, we are going to see continued decarbonization because that’s what the capital markets are expecting,” Cherney said.
The question for the United States is how quickly will it decarbonize in the coming years. In climate terms, the only metric that counts is the concentration of greenhouse gases — and those continue to steadily increase globally.
As Harris prepares to assume the climate mantle, perhaps the enduring lesson of her years in the Biden administration is this: When it comes to climate, there’s always more to do.
“The only thing the science says is get to net zero as quickly as we can,” Jenkins said. “The question is, how quickly can we do it?”
