As America prepares to transition to a new presidential administration, there also is a lot of speculation about what portions of the Biden administration’s agenda will be implemented.
Among the Build Back Better plan – President-elect Joe Biden’s proposal for economic recovery – is a portion regarding energy efficiency measures and renewable energy. This has led to questions about what this plan could mean for individual businesses and the economy at large.
Here are some of the key takeaways from Biden’s Build Back Better plan for businesses looking to improve their energy efficiency:
Rejoin Paris Climate Accords
Biden has made rejoining the Paris Climate Accords on Day 1 of his presidency a central part of his plan.
In doing this, he puts the United States back on a trajectory to reduce national carbon emissions with the goal of limiting the global temperature increase in this century to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
By re-joining the Accords, the Biden administration will put into place a path for regulations that reduce emissions across the board. This likely means there will be regulations for private companies and their energy usage, and further incentive programs to help businesses add more energy-efficient equipment to their buildings.
Deploying Clean Technology
From the plan to distribute more than 500,000 public charging outlets to cities across the country by the end of 2030 to targeting the carbon footprint reduction in the nation’s building stock by 2035, the Build Back Better plan has aggressive plans to distribute clean technology from coast to coast.
For the private sector, this will mean the implementation of additional incentives to retrofit their buildings and operations to aid in the carbon footprint reduction goals.
These plans, still in their early phases, are likely to include both measures to make buildings more energy efficient and to retrofit them with on-site clean power generation such as solar panels. If enacted, these additional incentives could go a long way toward helping individual businesses implement their energy management plans without massive initial capital investments.
Increased Pollution Consequences
On the other side of the coin is the Biden administration’s plan to hold accountable those businesses that aren’t taking their energy emission reduction seriously.
The first step in Biden’s plan is to enact legislation that requires polluting companies to bear the full cost of their pollution. Once those laws are in place, Biden says he will direct the Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department to aggressively pursue these cases.
With this portion of the plan, the hope is to make the consequences of polluting severe enough that companies find it easier and less costly to implement energy management plans than to deal with the ramifications of polluting.
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