Addressing climate change and its effects is one of President-elect Joe Biden’s top four priorities. Growing the clean-energy sector will be necessary to achieve his new administration's goal of economy-wide, net-zero emissions by 2050 at the latest, a 2035 target for a “carbon pollution-free power sector” and plans to rejoin the 2015 Paris Agreement, from which President Donald Trump announced the US would withdraw, an action that took effect on Nov. 4.

That global agreement sets a collective goal of limiting CO₂ rise in the 21st century to under 2° C above pre-industrial levels, with each country submitting specific reductions. The U.S. had initially pledged to cut, by 2025, greenhouse gas emissions to 26%-28% below the 2005 level, as well as strive for an overall 28% emissions reduction.

查看更多ENER 新利18备用2020选举过渡范围labor, theborder wallandtransportation。

重新加入该协议可能会导致政府“投入大量资金来增加可再生能源的使用，建筑项目必须将其纳入他们的计划和设计中，”新利18备用网址环境和城市研究与公共政策研究计划。

他说：“尽管联邦政府缺乏方向，但德克萨斯州等红色州仍在大量投资可再生能源。尽可能多地项目。”

行业还渴望最终看到制定基础设施资金计划的真正进步，这是未能实现的特朗普承诺，可以提高清洁能力和其他环境基础设施。“一项基础设施法案将有助于使我们的国家恢复工作，并取得了切实的成果。我们的水基础设施，清洁水，废水和地表径流的改进已经逾期了，”加利联邦运营总监杰伊·麦奎伦（Jay McQuillen）说。建造。“新政府还应鼓励使用替代交付施工方法，以更快地完成项目。”新利18备用网址

In a conference call with congressional leaders, the president-elect and members noted the clean-energy and environmental sector’s potential to fuel bipartisan solutions for climate change and the need for well-paying union jobs.

The jobs potential has already generated action, with a11月19日公告by North America's Building Trades Unions and leading U.S. offshore wind developer Orsted of a deal to "transition U.S. union construction workers" into that renewable energy sector as a "model for labor-management cooperation and workforce development," they said.

建筑行业总裁肖恩·麦加维（Sean McGarvey）说：“我们训练有素的男女专业人士现在将获得深水海洋工作的新经验。”罗德岛海岸附近的岛上风电场，于2017年完成。

Orsted has much larger projects under development off the coasts of Rhode Island, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia, as well as work in other renewables sectors.

太阳能行业的屁股ociation’s legislative and regulatory agendas to put the U.S. on a path to 100% clean energy includes infrastructure, job programs and “most urgently” a new tax policy that rapidly expands the use of solar energy, says Lyle Rawlings, president of New Jersey-based Advanced Solar Products and vice president of a 62-member group cooperative.

He adds that it wants a 30% federal investment tax credit for projects extended through 2025. The existing credit, now at 26%, will drop to 22% at the end of 2020. The best action would be to convert tax credits to a cash grant to open a new way to deploy capital, support a rapid conversion to renewables and have a stimulus effect to end the COVID-19 recession, Rawlings told ENR.

“This will likely have Biden’s support,” he says. President Trump’s policies hit the solar industry hard with higher tariffs on photovoltaic panels and regulatory changes that made it more difficult for clean energy projects to compete with fossil fuels. “It was pretty much a comprehensive assault on renewable energy,” he says.

看海上

行业研究公司伍德·麦肯齐（Wood Mackenzie）副主席埃德·克鲁克斯（Ed Crooks）表示，海上风可能在拜登的能源议程中发挥核心作用。

Blue Water Wind的前高管吉姆·拉纳德（Jim Lanard）说，拜登在特拉华州参议院服役时是近海风能开发的早期支持者，也是强烈的拥护者，他当时正在州海岸开发风能。

Through mandates or goals, states are committed to nearly 30 GW of renewable energy. “But in the east, there is not a lot of space for solar or land-based wind, so the only way those standards can be met is with offshore wind,” Lanard says.

Brandon Burke, policy director for The Business Network for Offshore Wind, an advocacy group for project developers, says federal approval—possibly by year end—of final environmental permits for the first major U.S. commercial-scale project could quicken other signoffs “and significantly enhance market certainty that investors must see to justify large manufacturing investments.”

U.S. government approval of the $2-billion, 800-MW Vineyard Wind project off the Massachusetts coast was set back by more than a year in 2019, with new permit requirements added at the last minute. Some saw this as politically-motivated.

Burke says the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) should also have a bigger role in requiring regional entities such as grid operators to develop integrated transmission planning approaches, with the federal government also offering more direct and indirect financial support to build and upgrade infrastructure.

N.J.'s New Bar for States, Feds

That role was brought into focus on Nov. 18, with New Jersey announcing an alliance between a state and a grid operator, PJM Interconnect, to jointly develop what would be the first offshore wind power connection into the existing state transmission system, which could become a regional hub.

New Jersey's Board of Public Utilities now will seek bid proposals in first-quarter 2021 for design and construction options for onshore system upgrades, potential offshore platforms to collect energy from multiple wind farms, and an ocean transmission "backbone" to channel collected power from multiple state facilties and offshore lease areas.

The approach would be a departure for planned projects so far, whose developers have won approval to control offshore wind power transmission as well as production, to insure that third parties delays in completing grid connection construction do not impact generation schedules.

New Jersey has a goal of 7,500 MW of offshore wind by 2025.

"I am optimistic that with the changing of the guard in Washington, a more functional FERC will be cooperative with regional grids," said Joseph Fiordaliso, board president. "The future is bright."

A next step for the Interior Dept.’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is to lease more area on the outer continental shelf for wind projects, including segments farther out to sea that will minimize conflicts with commercial and military interests.

Even with lukewarm Trump administration support, there were “record-breaking offshore wind lease area auction results in the past four years,” says Burke, with more than $400 million paid by developers.

“Results like these make the department one of the federal government’s largest revenue generators,” he contends.

Proponents also see growth potential in a Biden government for West Coast and Gulf of Mexico offshore wind, with better federal inter-agency cooperation and bipartisan congressional support

伯克说，海上风是“曾经是一代人创造就业机会，扩大公司并推动美国创新的机会”。

Fossil Fuels-What's Ahead?

The clean-energy focus does not put the brakes on fossil fuel development, according to some participants and observers. A Biden administration is likely to favor a gradual transition away through slowed permits, possibly halted federal oil and gas leasing, and requiring carbon and lifecycle costs to be analyzed for federal projects.

路易斯安那州大学大学能源研究中心的路易斯安那州大学大学教授兼执行主任戴维·迪姆克斯（David Dismukes）说：“化石不会做得很好，但并不像预期的那样差。”他预计，像奥巴马政府中一样，要进行温带，以研究为重点的运动朝着可再生能源发展。

S&P Global Platts Analytics预测“温和影响“如果拜登新federa禁令l drilling permits, which would put up to 1.1 million barrels per day of oil output and 3.7 billion cu ft per day of natural gas output at risk by 2025.

Biden has said he will transition away from fossil fuels and will ban hydraulic fracking on public land, but Dismukes says politics will play a role in administration follow-through if officials are concerned about the outcome of midterm elections in 2022—pointing out that energy was a key issue in a number of House races that Republicans won from Democrats tin the current election.

"When you dig deeply into the House and Senate results, this election was actually an overwhelming victory for U.S. energy leadership and the millions of jobs and economic benefits ]it] provides," said Mike Sommers, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute at a recent industry virtual forum. Formerly chief of staff to House Republican Majority Leader John Boehner and a special assistant to President George W. Bush, he also noted API outreach to the Biden team to provide industry input on climate change and deregulation policy ahead.

Industry officials have also noted growing Republican strength in statehouse elections, with the potential of more attorneys general blocking new curbs on oil and gas projects.

Dismukes adds the administration is going to be too busy with economic recovery and COVID-19 response to do too much on energy right away.

But a Biden Interior Dept. could adjust royalty rates for fossil-fuel extractors and for solar and wind producers using public land," wrote attorneys for the law firm Sidley Austin in a博客post. "Leveraging economic incentives to achieve the results desired (e.g., carbon-free electricity) would square to Biden’s campaign.”

ClearView Energy analyst Kevin Book, in a recent Platt’spodcast说，通过FERC和其他机构，政府可能会慢慢步行的化石燃料项目，包括有争议的Keystone XL管道。新利18备用网址

“It’s going to be a tough road permitting pipeline and LNG facilities through FERC. They are going to be very scrutinized,” Dismukes agreed.

Book says it’s likely a Biden executive order will require federal agencies to fully analyze the impact of carbon in projects, which will slow them and could halt traditional oil and gas construction jobs altogether. Addition of hydrogen in natural gas power plants is seen as one mitigating option, with the first such U.S. plant now under construction.

“Decisions will be slowed down for review,” Book said. “We have been told there will be a climate test” for infrastructure.

Bracewell’s Policy Resolution Group, a lobbying firm in Washington D.C., says the relationship between the Biden campaign and organized labor— Brad Markell, executive director of the AFL-CIO's industrial union council, was named to the U.S. Energy Dept. transition team—suggest that “policies undermining energy and manufacturing growth will fail to gain traction, at least as long as the U.S. seeks a path of sustainable economic recovery.”

环境变化

Climate resilience also will get a boost under the new administration. Retired Maj. Gen. Michael J. Walsh, a former U.S. Army Corps of Engineers deputy commanding general for civil and emergency operations who now is a senior adviser at policy consultant Dawson and Associates, says he hopes for an infrastructure bill that funds Corps projects that have been studied and authorized—especially those to shore up protections for a changing climate along coasts and rivers.

Gannett Fleming的水管总监Luis Casado同意。“ the integration of resiliency as part of the solution is a must, as it provides for adaptation and a future that preserves quality of life." He added "We don’t have time to spare in much of our infrastructure — water, wastewater, and all infrastructure needs have risen to a critical level. Cooperation between federal, state, and local government agencies is key to providing solutions as well as the trillions of dollars required to get our infrastructure in working order. It is through this cooperation that attainable, scaleable, and constructible solutions can be reached. "

The incoming administration will also weigh environmental justice considerations in plans for new development, decisions on remediation projects and for job creation, says university professor Lodato. “Projects that will have a demonstrably negative impact on communities of color will undergo a heightened level of scrutiny, and some will be scrapped.”

He lists lead-pipe removal in municipal water systems as an effort the administration is likely to boost resources for—an example of a way for it “not only to right historical wrongs, but as public works projects that create jobs in low-income areas.” Biden as a candidate pledged to allocate 40% of the planned investment in clean energy to “disadvantaged communities.”

Rural, urban and tribal communities could also see increased wildfire, storm and flood resilience and public land and water restoration efforts, noted Natural Resources Defense Council CEO Gina McCarthy, a former EPA administrator under President Obama, in a blog post.

Following an administration that enacted dozens of environmental regulatory rollbacks, the Biden government can be expected to begin to reverse them, including restoration of climate impact assessments for projects under the National Environmental Policy Act as a possible day one priority, Lodato says.

使环境政策行政命令revamps and rollbacks harder to reverse, “Biden is likely to seek legislative approval for some of these issues,” he adds.