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A plan by the Biden administration to force the rapid adoption of renewable energy would quickly reduce the planet’s heating emissions and save hundreds of thousands of lives from deadly air pollution, a new report has revealed amid a increasing pressure on the White House to deliver a major blow against the climate crisis.
Of the various climate policy options available to the new administration, a clean energy standard would provide the United States with the largest net benefits, according to the report, in terms of costs and lives saved.
A clean energy standard would force utilities to increase the amount of clean energy, such as solar and wind power, that they use, through a system of incentives and penalties. The Biden administration hoped to include the measure in its major infrastructure bill, but it was dropped after compromise negotiations with the Republicans.
But the new report, carried out by a consortium of researchers from Harvard University, the Georgia Institute of Technology and Syracuse University, suggests that this would be the most effective tool for achieving the White House’s goal of 80% renewable energy use by 2030. Joe Biden has said he wants all electricity to be renewable by 2035.
A clean energy standard to reach the target of 80% by the end of the decade would save an estimated 317,500 lives in the United States over the next 30 years, due to a sharp reduction in pollution atmospheric due to the combustion of coal, oil and gas. In 2030 alone, 9,200 premature deaths would be avoided once emissions reductions are achieved. The number of lives saved would be “immediate, widespread and substantial,” the report said.
A total of $ 1.13 billion in health savings from cleaner air would be achieved by 2050, with air quality improvements being felt most severely by black people who are currently suffering disproportionate damage in living near highways and power plants.
Every state in the United States would benefit from better air quality, according to the report, although the greatest benefits would go to Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania and Illinois, all states with ‘significant fossil fuel infrastructure.
The rapid switch to renewables would cost around $ 342 billion through 2050, via capital and maintenance costs, although fuel costs would fall as renewables are cheaper to operate than fossil fuels. The study added, however, that the financial benefits of tackling the climate crisis would eclipse that figure, to nearly $ 637 billion.
“The costs are much lower than we expected and the deaths averted are much higher; there really is a huge opportunity here to tackle climate change and air quality, ”said Kathy Fallon Lambert, study co-author and air quality expert at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.
“It would be a huge leap forward in ambition and we would see that in the health impacts, there would be millions of fewer asthma attacks, for example. And that doesn’t even take into account the health impacts of heat and other climate-related causes. “
Lambert said a clean energy standard would be “extremely effective” at reducing emissions, far more than other proposals such as a carbon tax.
Biden is facing pressure from environmentalists, as well as big companies like Apple and Google, to implement the new standard after his withdrawal from the infrastructure bill. The president said the measure will be included in a new reconciliation bill that can adopt party lines, although it will force every Democratic senator to vote for, which will prove to be a challenge.
The White House is determined to make this happen however, with Gina McCarthy, Biden’s chief climate adviser, saying the measure is “non-negotiable” in the next infrastructure package.
“We have to make sure that we send a signal that we want renewables and that they are going to win,” McCarthy told Punchbowl News last week.
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