Memo: A Green Marshall Plan - America’s Global Climate Compact
By Sagatom Saha, Narayan Subramanian, and Arianna Menzelos
Executive Summary
The climate crisis presents an unprecedented global challenge. For many countries around the world, embarking on a clean energy transition and improving climate resilience remain, at best, a long-term goal amid a sea of immediate concerns such as poverty, terrorism, and the economy. Although clean energy technologies are cheaper than ever before, prices are not declining fast enough to limit warming to safe levels. Financing barriers and competing concerns stymie action. New, innovative technologies and international mobilization will be necessary to meet the challenge of global decarbonization.
The United States can uniquely provide leadership on the climate crisis by taking inspiration from and building on the Marshall Plan, the last time American development assistance reshaped the global economy. Over the course of the Democratic primary campaign, presidential candidates put forward a range of proposals from Vice President Joe Biden’s “Clean Energy Export and Climate Investment Initiative” to Senator Elizabeth Warren’s “Green Marshall Plan.” While these proposals vary in scale, they share a commitment “to promote American clean energy exports” and provide assistance to “countries hardest hit by the climate crisis.” This report collectively addresses the shared goals of these proposals through the moniker adopted by Senator Warren to signal the highest level of ambition.
At its core, a Green Marshall Plan seeks to provide aid to other countries for the purchase of American-made clean energy and climate-resilient infrastructure products, improve collaboration on clean energy innovation, and expand the global supply chain. In addition to its domestic benefits, a Green Marshall Plan can promote sustainable, inclusive development across the world and bridge the infrastructure gap that stymies international economic development. This report offers concrete recommendations for how a new administration can operationalize a Green Marshall Plan.
