The Fingerprints Of The Green New Deal Are All Over The CLEAN Future Act
By Julian Brave NoiseCat, Leah C. Stokes and Narayan Subramanian
In January, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy & Commerce released a draft of the CLEAN Future Act, a bill that would transition the United States to a 100% clean energy economy by 2050. The bill received a mixed response. Green groups like the League of Conservation Voters, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Natural Resource Defense Council praised its overall goals. Other environmental groups, including Friends of the Earth, criticized the bill for including emissions trading and lax standards that would do little to phase out fossil fuels.
Both critics and supporters, however, largely overlooked the fact that the legislation reflects a significant paradigm shift in climate policy. It is part of a movement away from modest taxes on carbon, often alongside dividends and sometimes even regulatory rollbacks––and towards robust public investment, a commitment to justice and the use of aggressive performance standards in decarbonization.
This paradigm shift is a welcome development for those fighting for ambitious and equitable national policies to confront the climate crisis and build the clean energy economy. It is a sign of the power of the movement for a Green New Deal (GND) led, in Congress, by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey. It also shows the influence of climate leaders like Gov. Jay Inslee, who centered his presidential campaign on aggressive climate action that relied on performance standards, investment and justice.
Performance Standards
The CLEAN Future Act is heavy on performance standards and light on carbon pricing. The legislation uses a price on carbon as a backstop in states that fail to implement adequate economy-wide reduction plans to meet the 2050 “national climate standard” of net-zero carbon pollution. This is a victory for progressive climate advocates, who have been pushing for years to decenter carbon pricing, which, we have argued, should play a complementary role as part of a broader climate policy apparatus. Carbon pricing will remain necessary to squeeze emissions out of every segment of the economy. However, by implementing performance standards on electricity, vehicles, buildings and super-pollutants, this proposal would ensure more direct and effective carbon pollution-reductions in the major emitting sectors of the economy. Furthermore, such policies have been a priority for environmental justice advocates, who have not wanted polluters to be allowed to pay for the privilege of continuing emissions in their communities. The bill is particularly aggressive on methane, a potent greenhouse gas. It requires a rapid reduction in methane leaks of 65% by 2025 and 90% by 2030--even faster than Data for Progress suggested in our 2018 Green New Deal report.
Still, the performance standards in the draft legislation leave much to be desired. A common critique of the draft CLEAN Future Act is that its Clean Electricity Standard (CES) sets the baseline carbon-intensity for an electricity source at 0.82 tons of CO2 per megawatt-hour of power, roughly the levels of an “efficient” coal power plant–and twice as dirty as the 0.4 ton baseline used in the recent Smith-Lujan CES legislation. Any generation source with lower carbon-intensity can receive a partial or full credit, leaving space for some coal, any natural gas, and any biomass to get varying levels of credit, while renewables and nuclear energy receive full credit. The CES ratchets up the number of clean energy credits required over time, so partial credits for fossil fuels would eventually work their way out of the system. Still, this gradual off-ramp for polluters means that fenceline communities would continue to face health burdens from ongoing extraction and point source pollution.
We could perhaps look past this lifeline for polluters if the CES had the appropriate level of ambition, phasing credits out within a decade or so. As drafted, though, the CES timeline is too slow, aiming for 100% clean electricity by 2050. This is also inconsistent with the bill’s overall goal of targeting net-zero emissions economy-wide on the same timeline. If we want to cut our emissions in half within the coming decades, as the IPCC has stated is necessary to limit warming to 1.5 °C, we must make serious progress on cleaning up and growing the electricity sector. This would allow us to reduce emissions from three sectors--electricity, transportation and buildings–which combined make up more than two-thirds of US emissions. Other Democrats’ proposals have been far more ambitious, targeting zero emissions from electricity by 2030 or 2035. While this is no doubt extremely challenging, we cannot wait until 2050 to clean up our electricity grid. We cannot afford a CES that lets fossil fuels linger in the electric system for another 30 years.
That said, the focus that the CLEAN Future Act places on performance standards is a welcome development for those fighting for proven, effective clean energy policies. Nine states, plus Washington, DC and Puerto Rico, have passed 100% clean electricity standards. Clean car standards have been among the most effective and lasting federal climate policies. Many Democrats running for President over the past year put out policy ideas that centered performance standards, including Gov. Jay Inslee, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders. It is very encouraging to see Congress take a similar approach.
Public Investment
The AOC-Markey Green New Deal resolution asserts that it is the duty of the federal government “to invest in the infrastructure and industry of the United States to sustainably meet the challenges of the 21st century.” This investment-led approach was lacking from mainstream climate policy discourse, which too-often framed the problem as a market failure, rather than a failure of the federal government to set industrial policy.
The CLEAN Future Act recognizes that the climate challenge will require significant federal investment. The term “investment” appears more than 30 times throughout the discussion draft. The bill proposes a federal Buy Clean program that sets emissions standards for public procurement. Many environmental and labor groups support this approach because it recognizes the role the government can play as a major buyer of goods like concrete and steel, in spurring low-carbon manufacturing. This approach is also popular with the public, as previous Data for Progress polling has shown.
The bill also includes a National Climate Bank with a $10 billion initial capitalization. These provisions are similar to Sen. Markey’s 2019 Green Bank Act, which would leverage public funds for clean technologies, zero-emission transportation fleets and climate-resilient infrastructure. This proposal, coupled with the $760 billion infrastructure bill that came out the same week, indicates that Democrats now recognize the need for major federal investments in the face of our planetary crisis. This is a start. We must continue to push them further.
Justice
The CLEAN Future Act also signals Democrats’ commitment to considering frontline communities and workers in a just transition to a clean energy economy. Title VI of the bill focuses on environmental justice and would codify a series of interagency working groups, advisory councils and executive orders focused on measuring and addressing the disproportionate impacts of pollution on low-income communities of color. It is similar to the Climate Equity Act introduced by Sen. Kamala Harris and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez last summer.
Under the legislation, states would be required to show how their implementation plans under the Clean Air Act address hazardous air pollutants in frontline communities. And Title VIII, Subtitle E of the bill, on “fairness to American workers,” would require government contractors and subcontractors to pay prevailing wages. It would also allow agencies to require project labor agreements on publicly-funded projects, which would ensure union workers benefit from federal investments. The draft requires domestically produced iron, steel and manufactured goods be used in public works, with some exceptions. All of these measures would be an improvement over the status quo. With just a little more ambition, consultation and trust, these proposals could serve as a starting point for the justice-oriented coalition-building policies required to get climate legislation passed into law.
Conclusion
The CLEAN Future Act is over 600 pages long, so there are significant details left for analysts, activists and lawmakers to dig through and scrutinize. It’s also not the only climate bill in motion, as we approach the next Congress and administration in 2021. It’s also worth noting that the Energy & Commerce committee is limited in the proposals it can put forward by its jurisdiction. The draft does not and could not include anything about agriculture, for example. Ultimately, the CLEAN Future Act is a good start, but there is room for improvement. Right now, it’s not up to the task of limiting warming to 1.5 °C while fighting growing economic inequality.
Nonetheless, this marker bill suggests that there are opportunities for an ambitious, equitable and big-tent approach to climate legislation that attracts support from a diverse Democratic coalition. While future laws to mitigate and adapt to global warming may not be called a “Green New Deal,” it appears likely that any Democratic offering will bear the markings of that approach.
The progressive climate movement should see the CLEAN Future Act as proof that we have fundamentally reshaped the mainstream approach to climate action in the Democratic Party. We must see this progress as an invitation to re-double our efforts. We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to launch a national mobilization to confront the climate crisis and build a more just and equitable economic future run on clean energy. We must ensure the Democratic Party seizes this opportunity.
Julian Brave NoiseCat is the Vice President of Policy & Strategy at Data for Progress
Leah C. Stokes is an Assistant Professor at the University of California Santa Barbara
Narayan Subramanian is a Fellow with Data for Progress