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By Jeff Young
Environment and Sustainability Editor
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When President Joe Biden got to the topic of climate change in his final address to the nation from the Oval Office Wednesday evening, he had somber warnings and a bold claim.
"The existential threat of climate change has never been clearer," Biden said from the Resolute Desk. From the fires raging in California to the flooding that swept away towns in North Carolina last year, he warned, climate change is exacerbating extreme weather.
Then came the bold claim: "That's why I signed the most significant climate and clean-energy law ever—ever—in the history of the world."
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That might sound like hyperbole. The U.S. is still falling short on international commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and clean-energy deployment in some other countries, notably China, towers over that in the U.S. But many climate scientists and policy researchers say the numbers largely back up Biden's claim: The suite of climate-related regulations and legislation the president and congressional Democrats put in place over the past four years amount to unparalleled climate action.
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While many of Biden's actions will take time to bear fruit—and some may soon be reversed—the data shows that he can rightly claim a climate legacy of significantly cutting carbon pollution, jump-starting renewable and nuclear energy and unleashing a flood of public and private investment in clean technologies that are already transforming major American industries.
"I really think that the Biden administration redefined the standard for what ambitious climate action looks like at the federal level," Ben King, an associate director in the energy and climate practice at Rhodium Group, told Newsweek. Rhodium is a prominent research firm whose analysis reports have become important measures of climate policy impacts.
King said his group's latest analysis shows that under current policies, the U.S. is on track to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade from 38 to 56 percent compared to 2005 levels, "a pretty substantial achievement," he added.
When Biden took office, King said, the most optimistic projections were for about a 25 percent reduction of emissions in a decade.
Biden's administration pursued regulatory limits on CO2 emissions from autos and power plants, but much of the progress in cutting carbon pollution comes from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). That mammoth piece of legislation included billions of dollars in tax credits, loans and other incentives for renewable energy, clean tech, electric vehicles and the supply chains to support them, making it the single biggest climate action the federal government has ever taken.
"I think Biden has made the most significant policy commitments to addressing climate change and advancing an energy transition and promoting environmental justice that we have seen in the White House to date," Jay Turner, professor of environmental studies at Wellesley College, told Newsweek.
Turner is an environmental historian, and with his students, he meticulously tracks the renewable energy and clean tech developments fostered by Biden's policies. Since the passage of the IRA in 2022, he has identified 271 projects, $163 billion in announced investments and a little more than 163,000 jobs created.
"We've seen a real shift in the last four years from focusing on putting a price on carbon, trying to cut down emissions by penalizing them, and instead focusing on climate action as an economic opportunity," Turner said.
Some have called it a "more carrot, less stick" strategy that emphasizes growing clean-energy sources over regulating dirty ones. Biden didn't invent that approach, Turner said—the rhetoric and framing from this White House largely matches that from Barack Obama's—but Biden delivered on growth and jobs in the clean tech sector in ways that previous administrations did not.
That remarkable policy record did not, however, translate into political success for Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris. Despite polling from earlier election cycles that shows that climate action is important to several voting groups, there is little indication that Biden, Harris and other Democrats were able to use their record on the issue to move voters in 2024. Many of the states and congressional districts that received the biggest economic boost from the IRA remained solidly Republican.
Former President Donald Trump returns to the White House next week with a pledge to undo what he has called the "green scam" of Biden's climate action and instead focus on fossil fuel development. As Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said this month, "We will drill, baby, drill."
Biden's climate team exits with a mix of pride in their accomplishments and anxiety about how many of the policies they crafted will survive, and whether the U.S. will stay on a path to grow clean-energy jobs and lower carbon emissions.
Climate Adviser Says U.S. Leadership at Stake
Biden's top climate adviser Ali Zaidi said that in the past four years, he has seen ideas for climate action that were "a Google Doc on my computer" in 2020 become legislative text, win passage in Congress and start taking effect in the real world.
In his last week in the administration, his thoughts have turned to how many of those policies will stand and how the country's clean-energy transition that those policies pushed along will fare.
"We've achieved escape velocity on parts of the climate journey," Zaidi told Newsweek in an extensive interview.
He said the shift to cleaner power on the electric grid now has its own economic momentum as the costs of wind, solar power and battery storage keep falling. Similarly, he said, the growth of cleaner cars is now on a "secular and sustained trajectory" as EVs gain traction.
"The Biden administration put booster packs on the rocket, and it took off," Zaidi said, building on his liftoff analogy. "In other places, unfortunately, we built the launchpad, but it's going to take a little bit more work and, if we don't, we get left behind."
Zaidi said he worries that a U.S. retreat from federal support for things such as cleaner production of steel and aluminum, advances in battery technology and climate-smart agriculture will mean that America could lose out in the growing global market.
"The question becomes who will be the leader, from a manufacturing perspective, from a geopolitical perspective, in shaping this clean-energy future around the world?" Zaidi said. "I think that very much remains at an inflection point that can break a bunch of different ways."
Since the November election, Zaidi and his colleagues have been "sprinting through the finish line," he said, to complete major loans for clean-energy projects, set the new U.S. target for greenhouse emissions reductions under the Paris Climate Agreement and restrict new permits for offshore oil and gas drilling.
Will Clean Energy Get Bipartisan Support?
Zaidi said many of Biden's clean-energy initiatives will take time to fully develop.
"The long arc of the political economy of investing in clean energy and climate security points upward," he said. As EV battery makers and other clean tech manufacturing generate more jobs and economic impact, they will also gain more political momentum that will have effects across party lines.
The IRA passed without any Republican support in Congress, but as the investments the law triggered flow into red states and Republican districts, political leaders there will act to support those home-state jobs, he predicted.
"What was a partisan party-line vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act has given way to a bipartisan implementation effort," Zaidi said.
Wellesley College professor Turner agreed, pointing out that some Republicans in Congress wrote to House leaders arguing for keeping some IRA funding in place. If Trump attempts to gut the law, Turner said, he could end up at odds with some in his own party.
"We might see Republicans raising real questions about whether that's the right way to go, considering how much investment we're seeing in Republican congressional districts," he said.
A wholesale reversal of the IRA and other Biden climate incentives and regulations would have a dramatic effect on carbon pollution, Rhodium's King found. The group's analysis of Trump's energy proposals found that greenhouse gas emissions would be 24 to 36 percent higher than under current policy.
As Biden made his farewell address Wednesday, he had a second warning on climate change, a warning about the risks of dismantling his climate policies.
"Powerful forces want to wield their unchecked influence to eliminate the steps we've taken to tackle the climate crisis," Biden said. "We must keep pushing forward, and push faster."
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