Much of the debate over President Biden’s massive infrastructure proposal has been over its $2 trillion price tag. But the most powerful tool for tackling the climate crisis in the American Jobs Plan, in the view of many environmentalists, isn’t money, but Biden’s proposal to create a national clean electricity standard.
That idea—a mandate for increasing the share of U.S. electricity that comes from carbon-free sources every year—has been taking a beating in the political gauntlet of Capitol Hill.
Biden’s national climate policy adviser Gina McCarthy began dampening expectations for its survival last week, although she told POLITICO that the White House would “fight like crazy” to retain the standard as it struggles for a bipartisan deal in the Senate over one of the nation’s most politically polarized issues.
Read more at Inside Climate News.