The Climate Change Policies of the Democratic Presidential Candidates

By David Rejeski

On the evening of February 19, some 22 million people tuned into the Nevada Democratic presidential debate, putting the slugfest ahead of the Grammy Awards and Golden Globe Awards televised ceremonies in terms of viewership and also beating out the final episode of “Game of Thrones.” In another notable milestone, at the time of the debate the latest Pew Research Center poll indicated that for the first time in the survey’s 20-year history, a majority of Americans see addressing climate change as the “top priority” for the president and Congress, actually exceeding their support for efforts to create jobs. Indeed, most of the candidates have seemed eager to address climate change—and some, such as Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer (who has since dropped out of the race), have made it their signature issue—but they differ on how to solve it.

When Jon Ralston, the editor of the Nevada Independent, dropped the climate question on the candidates near the end of the debate, the responses varied, touching on such things as more charging stations for electric vehicles, more solar energy, phasing out coal, banning fracking (or not), and please, more leadership. Pete Buttigieg (who also recently withdrew) asserted that every candidate had a plan to make the nation carbon neutral by 2050.

But it is worth recalling the enormity of that challenge. Over 80% of the energy consumed in the United States is presently supplied by fossils fuels: oil, coal, and gas. Less than 1% of the approximately 270 million vehicles on US roads are electric, and 2% of all electricity is generated by solar. Historical studies have shown that it can take 30 to 70 years for new technologies to displace the old, especially technologies locked in by decades of infrastructure investments, subsidies, industry lobbying, and consumer habit (think the internal combustion engine, most chemical manufacturing, and electricity generation).

That means the nation must rapidly phase out existing carbon-intensive technologies while developing and deploying carbon-neutral or carbon-negative alternatives and simultaneously avoiding negative and unintended consequences. This will call for exponentially more solar and wind power, next-generation energy storage, more “green” buildings, and effective carbon-capture systems. But even this will not be enough. As former secretary of energy Ernest Moniz recently noted regarding the nation’s 2050 climate goals, “I do not believe that there is a solution for our … goals and aspirations that does not involve major breakthroughs of new technologies.’’

Although there might not be a magical innovation spigot that a new president can simply turn on to address climate, there are some principles that might help to design a comprehensive strategy.

Forget silver bullets

The next administration will have to develop a portfolio-based strategy that includes rapid deployment of proven technologies in areas such as solar, wind, and electric mobility; scaling of more novel solutions, such as solid state batteries; proof-of-concept demonstrations of emerging technologies, such as carbon removal approaches; and continued funding of moonshots (high risk / high value projects).

Rapid deployment of climate-friendly technologies is a key part of many candidate strategies. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren support a rapid transition to electric vehicles, but their goals may be overly optimistic, assuming, for instance, reaching 100% saturation by 2030 (estimates are now in the realm of 18 million electric vehicles by 2030). As one moves beyond the obvious near-term interventions, proposals thin out. Sanders and Bloomberg seek investments for next-generation energy storage to address the Achilles heel of intermittent power sources such as wind and solar and to increase the range of electric vehicles. Joe Biden and Amy Klobuchar (who has dropped her candidacy and endorsed Biden) include funding for carbon capture and removal technologies, which might include such diverse options as land management, ocean alkalinity enhancement, or electrochemical carbon dioxide conversion. The International Energy Agency has called these technologies “essential” to reaching global climate goals. Yet Bloomberg has been vocal in his opposition to carbon removal, maintaining that such efforts will postpone needed investments in renewables and efficiency.

Sanders and Warren want to phase out nuclear power, which presently provides two-thirds of the nation’s carbon-free electricity. Biden calls for continued investments in the development of next-generation nuclear reactors. Former candidate Andrew Yang promised funds for a moonshot—nuclear fusion—that might include support for the type of research presently undertaken at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in France or the Plasma Science and Fusion Center (Sparc) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. No one else has taken up this idea since Yang dropped out of the race.

Seek synergies

In developing a portfolio, it is worth capitalizing on synergies across sectors (e.g., energy, transportation, agriculture, manufacturing, housing) and across substances (e.g., reaching beyond carbon to address methane, nitrogen, and even biodiversity loss). This may be one way to avoid the commonly occurring problem of a solution in one area creating negative impacts in another (e.g., spillovers, rebound effects). Many candidates, including Sanders and Biden, understand the important links and synergies between climate, energy, and agriculture and offer ideas and investments to decarbonize the agricultural sector, reduce dependence on energy-intensive farming practices, develop drought-resistant crops, explore vertical farming techniques, and further sustainable land use and forestry practices around the globe.

However, most of the plans focus, often obsessively, on carbon, while paying little attention to strategies that address other, often interrelated problems such as methane or, more generally, air pollution. Developing solutions to multiple problems may be politically expedient, as they will likely attract a wider constituency, since recent survey research indicated even higher public support for environmental protection than climate. Biden’s strategy calls for setting methane-pollution limits for new and existing oil and gas operations, an approach that may make fracking more acceptable as a transition strategy away from fossil fuels. Steyer supported deploying a system of pollution-detection satellites, starting with satellites that detect methane. Interestingly, Cory Booker put forth a plan for research and development investments in the land sector, with a focus on natural infrastructure, soil health, and forest resiliency, but since he dropped out no other candidate has adopted his R&D plan.

Hedge

Hedging is a way to protect communities, infrastructure, and investment portfolios in the face of the uncertainties inherent in climate change, either natural or caused by humans. One effective hedging strategy is to create more resilient systems. A few candidates focus on investments to build more resilient and efficient physical infrastructure by modernizing the nation’s electric grid and rail system; for example, Biden calls for a “Second Great Railroad Revolution,” and Sanders wants more investments in smart electric grids. (Yang had also specified $200 billion for grid modernization over the next 15 years.) Hedging can also involve thinking through more drastic interventions that may be needed if society fails to act, and working to proactively minimize their risks before they are needed (for example, through such diverse actions as geoengineering Earth’s climate or using gene editing to develop climate resistant crops). Only Yang had called for funds to support research into geoengineering approaches.

Get back in the game

The United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate, initially adopted in December 2015, is just one example of Trump administration actions to pull away from international governance agreements. The administration has also turned its back on the Iran nuclear deal, UNESCO, the United Nations Human Rights Council, the multilateral Arms Trade Treaty, and the World Trade Organization. All the Democratic candidates favor a return to the Paris climate accords. US involvement in the Paris negotiations will be especially important in the development of policy frameworks and the implementation of taxes, pricing, or other fiscal mechanisms to address global carbon inequities. But there is not much beyond Paris reentry in the candidates’ plans. As Jonathan Tepperman pointed out in Foreign Policy, they have largely “ignored the rest of the world and focused on domestic policies.” One exception was Steyer’s call for the enforcement of “human rights and environment requirements for international energy projects.” Part of Yang’s $800 million for geoengineering research was support for a global summit to coordinate work on the issue.

Getting back in the game also means building more effective R&D partnerships to leverage collaboration and cost-sharing with other nations. After World War II, the United States commanded almost 70% of the global R&D budget; today that figure is less than 30%. Globalization has created a new imperative for cross-border collaboration. Game-changing technological advances of the past, such as the sequencing of the human genome (an effort that involved 20 institutions in six countries) and the International Space Station, have benefited heavily from international collaborations. International partnerships focused on creating a range of precompetitive climate solutions could involve the largest R&D spenders, including the United States, China, the European Union, Japan, Germany, South Korea, and India.

All the candidates talk of spending billions on climate-related activities and initiatives, but they need to provide more detail on how the funds would be allocated and leveraged with other countries and also internally (between basic and applied research, for instance). Arati Prabhakar, a former director of the federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), recently said of the half a trillion dollars invested by the United States in R&D that it “isn’t focused on preparing us for the future that’s coming.”

People and organizations matter

The next president will have to address the fact that the US government is not optimally designed to drive the technological changes required for a sustainable future. The government needs to create institutions and capabilities capable of solving the most complex problems on the planet. A new administration could leverage existing government infrastructure, such as the Department of Energy’s National Laboratories or its Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), or create entirely new organizational models focused on breakthroughs. Biden, for instance, has suggested the creation of something called ARPA-C, a cross-agency Advanced Research Projects Agency focused on climate, with $400 billion for research to be allotted to universities and the private sector. Warren has proposed funding National Institutes of Clean Energy and a $400 million Green Apollo Program. Steyer proposed creating a Civilian Climate Corps and called for a cabinet-level position to coordinate a national climate change response effort.

Looking across the field of Democratic candidates, there are dozens of valuable ideas that have been floated, creating a large option space for strategy development and political coalition-building. The next president can mine that space by creating a portfolio-based strategy that addresses the need for rapid deployment, scaling, proof-of-concept, and breakthroughs, while also solving interrelated problems across sectors and hedging against negative outcomes or unintended consequences. That same attention to detail needs to be applied to organizational models and the selection of people who will hold leadership positions in the next administration.

The plans put forward by the candidates have unabashed price tags of between $1.5 trillion and $16 trillion, most covering a 10-year period. From the perspective of this tenfold expenditure difference alone, Buttigieg’s claim that all the candidates plans will get the nation to zero carbon by 2050 seems implausible. Moreover, whatever portfolio emerges will still have to confront fiscal reality—a trillion-dollar budget deficit and shrinking discretionary budget (presently $1.4 trillion in 2020)—and political reality. And even though the majority of Americans now see climate change as a priority, the recent Pew survey also shows it to be the most divisive issue separating Democrats and Republicans.

The eventual candidate will ultimately have to reconcile funding for climate with the costs of other parts of their platform, a point that surfaced continually in the Nevada debate. For instance, economists at the Urban Institute estimated that proposals for “Medicare for all” would require over $30 trillion in added federal spending over the next 10 years. If the Democrats maintain control of the House and win the White House, a Republican Senate could still block many initiatives, and even if the Democrats capture the Senate too, recent history suggests that debates over priorities and spending will still be fractious.

Even supposing funds can be found through taxes, savings, or creative reallocations, the absorptive capacity of the nation’s scientific and technological infrastructures can limit the effectiveness of additional funding, especially if it is expanded rapidly. Federal R&D funding as a function of gross domestic product (the total value of goods produced and services provided nationwide), which has been crucial to the support of basic and early applied research, has been flat or declining in real terms for the past 40 years.

Money alone will not solve the climate problem, nor will it guarantee the technological innovations the nation will need over the coming decades. The Obama administration flooded the economy with $840 billion following passage of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which included a “clean energy” or “green” stimulus component of between $67 billion and $112 billion. Subsequent analysis of these investments found that “the impacts of the RE [renewable energy] stimulus are not in and of themselves enough for the large-scale transformation needed.” To meaningfully address the climate challenge within a timeframe of 20 to 30 years, the nation will need fundamentally new capabilities that have not existed before and new organizational models to enable disruptive thinking focused on both long-term and planetary-scale solutions. None of the Democratic candidates has fully faced up to this challenge, but considered together their proposals and shared commitment can provide a strong foundation for making progress. If President Trump is reelected, of course, all bets are off. Then, the most innovative action on climate change will likely remain with the states and cities. History may in turn hold the president accountable for whatever disasters ensue, but that will be of little consolation to those in harm’s way tomorrow.