The 2020 Democratic Climate Change Primary
[Note: this document was released early for Super Tuesday, and so it is less edited and polished than I’d like. If I make changes, I’ll note that at the top.)
With each passing year the earth gets closer to ecological points of no return, the first of which is at about 1.5° Celsius of warming. To have an 80% chance of avoiding that, the IPCC recommends that global emissions reduce by 50% by 2030 and to net-zero by 2050. This is hard but not impossible. Each Democratic candidate for the party’s Presidential nomination has released a climate plan. I decided to read every single one of their plans to understand their competing visions. I worked for 2.5 years in the federal gov’t for the Department of Energy agency ARPA-e, which aims to change what’s possible via funding the development of new energy technology. This requires in practice a lot of consideration of potential technology and policy futures.
In this post I discuss each of the plans and rate them on four components of a comprehensive USA climate emissions reduction plan.
How does my scorecard* differ from that of Greenpeace?
- They follow a checklist whereas I sub-score on four areas and combine.
- Half of their score is on being specifically anti-fossil energy by passing several specific litmus tests. I think that component is part of each of my other four criteria.
- This scorecard only considers plan efficacy. The others score on social justice. I am not a social justice expert, so I don’t score that separately either..
* and, yes, it feels really weird to grade the candidate’s plan as if I were their teacher.
For comparison there are also scores for Donald Trump, who doesn’t believe in climate change, and Republican Senator Lamar Alexander, who does. One thing is clear: Donald Trump has put us on the darkest timeline.
The plans were rated on four green components. Green Goals & Mandates; R&D; Global Development; and Domestic Deployment.
Green Goals & Mandates: A great plan should set and enforce specific greenhouse gas reduction goals with regulatory mandates set year by year. These goals need to be strict enough to stop global warming at 1.5° C. Fuel economy standards work like this and have been very effective.
Green R&D: While low cost zero-emission electricity is possible with solar & wind, making zero-emission food, plane flights, and steel is not yet economical. R&D funding is necessary. The most ambitious call for a 6x of funding to $400B over the next 10 years.
Global Development. Climate change is a global problem. For developed countries to lead, they must have a trade policy that puts tariffs on GHG emitting imports. Green international development aid and financing is needed to help the developing world decarbonize.
Domestic Deployment: 2030 is 10 years away. Most energy technology infrastructure has a longer lifetime than 10 years. We need to mothball and retrofit our carbon emitters long before they’re replaced naturally.
There’s a huge diversity of proposals for this component such as carbon taxes, government procurement programs, loan guarantees, tax rebates, and “Clean cars for clunkers” programs.
Every democratic candidate says they’ll address each of these, some better than others. Some good news is that mandating emission reductions and green trade policy can be done by in significant part by executive order.
Green New Deal co-sponsors Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren score the highest. Each has a comprehensive and ambitious plan. Sanders, the Democratic Socialist, prefers to use direct government procurement. Warren, the Eco-Social Democrat, uses a mix of government procurement and incentivizing private green investment. They are not the same.
Biden claims to favor a green new deal, however his plan lacks any specific details and so does not inspire my confidence. His plan is only comprehensive in intention and in reminding people that he used to be Obama’s Veep and plans to reinstate Obama era executive orders. Biden commits to making a commitment on emission targets and dates, where other candidates suggest specific dates and targets. There is a commitment to helping the transition to a green economy, but no actual proposal to spend money to do so on specific things.
Bloomberg has ambitious and specific goals for a green economy. That part is great. He doesn’t commit to any particular program to support rapid domestic deployment of green technology or to green global development financing or aid. Without that support, it’s much less likely that those ambitious goals will actually be achieved. His reason for these omission is unclear
Buttigieg was the big positive surprise of my research. His plan is comprehensive, ambitious, specific, and written with deep specific policy knowledge. It’s a bit light on the domestic deployment budget and the targets are a little weak. But where Klobuchar and Biden want an Obama-plus plan, Buttigeieg actually proposed a $1T green new deal that enshrines exporting green technology as the raison d’etre of US Foreign Policy. Hopefully, the moderate wing of the Democratic party will recognize and follow his campaign’s thought leadership.
Klobuchar’s plan is a weak Obama-plus plan, and she won’t be President.
Steyer’s plan is good but philosophically uninspiring, and he won’t be President either.
Some folks don’t think it’s possible to prevent 1.5° C of warming. They’re wrong. We can do it, if we want it enough. We can find the money. If climate change is a security threat, we ought to spend on it like its a security threat. The Sanders plan calls for $1T per year and the Warren plan $0.3T pear in funding. This comes out to between 1.5% and 5.1% of US GDP. Today thee USA spends 3.1% of its GDP on its military. During the cold war it spent from 5.1% to 10% of GDP during the Cold War. And while military spending does nothing productive, spending to decarbonize is an infrastructure investment. While $500 Billion for a better power grid is a lot of money, over the long-run that kind of spending will save money in the through lower annual energy costs.
On to the candidates, in order of the probability that they’ll win the nomination per 538’s model.
Bernie Sanders
Primary Sources: Bernie Sanders’ Climate Plan.
Overall Grade: A+
Sanders’ plan is comprehensive, assertive, and socialist. It works heavily through direct federal procurement and subsidies. Bernie doesn’t use tax credits to spur innovation or make financing of green projects easier.
His plan is simple: spend a lot of public money to hit very ambitious goals.
GREEN GOALS AND MANDATES: A+
Sanders’ plan calls for a decarbonized electrical sector and transportation sector in 2030.
GREEN R&D: A+
Sanders’ calls for quadrupling clean R&D to $25 billion per year by 2025.
GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT: A
Sanders calls for bankrolling the international Green Climate Fund to $200B in order to finance international adoption of green energy technology. Bernie wants to establish US leadership, and his plan includes a border adjustment tariff.
DOMESTIC DEPLOYMENT: A+
Sanders plan is to spend money. $10T by my count would be direct clean energy deployment subsidies, including $2.4T to build renewable energy power plants and $3.1T for converting buildings.
Joe Biden
Primary Sources: Joe’s climate plan.
Overall Grade: B-/C+
Oh Joe Biden. Lord knows he was born a ramblin’ man. This much is clear from Joe’s plan: climate change is important, Paris accords and the green new deal are swell, and Joe was Obama’s Vice-President. At some point in the summer Biden said he would spend $1.7T on his green new deal, but there’s no mention of it on the website or anywhere else.
To speak more even-handedly, Biden’s plan lists his goals and outlines methods, but it doesn’t typically commit to any specific legislative goals with budgets or timelines. Instead it focuses on detailing executive actions it would take. He has also publicly and clearly committed to a a Green New Deal
GREEN GOALS AND MANDATES: C+
Biden’s going to decarbonize the economy by 2050. And there will be unspecified targets for 2025. Where will he start: reinstating Obama’s Clean Power Plan.
GREEN R&D: A+
Biden proposes expanding clean-tech R&D to $400B over 10 years. That’s the same as Warren and represents a 6x over today’s spending. He plans to start an ARPA-Cunder the advice of the founding director of ARPA-e. The Obama administration funded ARPA-e initially out of the stimulus bill and consider it one of their success stories. [Disclosure: I worked at ARPA-e from 2014–2016].
GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT: C
Biden will re-enter the Paris accords and use American soft power to encourage international Green Development. An unspecified amount of money will be used for global green financing. No border adjustment tariff is proposed.
DOMESTIC DEPLOYMENT: C+
Biden proposes a series of tax credits to enhance adoption of various Green Technologies.
Mike Bloomberg
Primary Sources: List of Plans, Clean power, clean transportation, international plan, response to Greenpeace survey, decarbonization plan proposed by his climate think-tank
Overall Grade: B-
Bloomberg has been a leading voice as a private citizen on climate action. With Gov. Jerry Brown, he developed a deep decarbonization plan, which presents with possible both if there is federal leadership, as well as if only leading states such as California and New York decarbonize.
Over the period in which I’ve researched and written this article, Mike Bloomberg came under media criticism for lack of detail in his climate plan on his website. Considerably more detail was then added to his plan.
Bloomberg’s plans have very good targets but have little global financing component, and he has no specific budget request to accelerate deployment in the USA.
GREEN GOALS AND MANDATES: B+
Bloomberg plans to pass a clean energy standard for the entire economy. His technical targets are a 50% reduction overall by 2030, 100% reduction overall by 2050, and 80% electricity decarbonization by 2028, and 100% new renewable transportation by 2035.
These goals are very similar to Buttigieg’s, in that it is ambitious, but not ambitious enough to hit IPCC targets for 2030. As electricity is only 40% of US energy consumption and the vast majority of vehicles will still run on internal combustion engines in 2030 by this plan, the specific goals do not support the overall goal of 50% reduction by 2030. It’s unclear where the balance of emission reductions would come from.
GREEN R&D: A+
Bloomberg targets a 4x in green R&D to ~$200B over 10 years.
GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT: C
Bloomberg’s international development plan does not include a border adjustment tariff or similar mechanism. International green development financing is similar to that in the Obama administration.
DOMESTIC DEPLOYMENT: C
Bloomberg’s ambitious overall goals are not supported by concrete funded proposals to accelerate adoption.
Elizabeth Warren
Primary Sources: Warren’s Climate Plan, and her other climate plan doc, and her green manufacturing plan.
Overall Grade: A
Warren’s plan is good. She chooses ambitious targets for going green, and deploys multiple parallel methods to get it done, including both public purchasing and incentivizing the private sector. This is a good plan.
One issue: in response to Jay Inslee she added $1T to her plan. But she doesn’t say what she’s going to use it for.
Full disclosure: I plan to vote for Liz Warren. I think her vision of fundamental reform of our politics and economy is the right path forward.
GREEN GOALS AND MANDATES: A
Warren calls for a carbon-neutral grid by 2030 and a zero-carbon grid by 2035. Carbon-neutral typically refers to the purchase of offsetting credits. Given her additional targets for clear new buildings and energy, and her substantial 10-year commitment to domestic climate transition spending, this plan should achieve IPCC targets.
GREEN R&D: A+
Warren calls for increasing clean energy R&D to $40B/year, which is six times current spending. She names this the “Green Apollo Program.”
GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT: A
Warren will put aside $100B for her Green Marshall Plan to finance and directly subsidize international green purchasing of US green technology. This is a substantial commitment.
DOMESTIC DEPLOYMENT: A
Warren combines have domestic spending — over $2.5T — with specific tax subsidies, financing programs, and clean cars for clunkers style retrofitting operations.
Pete Buttigieg
Primary Sources: Peter Buttigieg’s climate plan and his answers to the GreenPeace survey
Overall Grade: A-
Buttigieg’s plan is to right of Warren’s & Sanders, but I would dance in the streets if it became law. While his goals are too weak and his domestic program too small, they’re still ambition and would change the conversation from “whether” to “how much.”
Imagine a world in which if the Republicans were generally reasonable about climate change, and President Warren won a negotiation in the Senate with them. You might get Pete’s plan.
Pete’s entire platform has that feel, and it lands as substantially more progressive than Biden’s or Klobuchar’s but substantially less progressive than Warren or Sanders. I didn’t expect, as I think of him as “that guy who attacks Warren and Sanders from the right and has a major issue with black voters.”
Unlike the left wing candidates, he favors carbon capture, nuclear, and will not immediately end all fossil fuel extraction. If you like the idea of massive public-private infrastructure investment partnerships, take a close look at his plan. It won’t be hard; his is the most clearly written and shows a deep understanding of the energy technical and policy landscape. My favorite feature is a $50B fund to help deploy new technology at scale, when it still has too much technical risk for private capital. That solves a problem that most people aren’t aware of.
GREEN GOALS AND MANDATES: B
Buttigieg calls for a clean grid by and and all new cars to be clean by 2035, amongst other specific targets based on regulatory mandates. Unfortunately, electricity produces only 40% of carbon emissions, and the average age of cars is 11 years, so this plan doesn’t meet intermediate targets.
GREEN R&D: A+
Buttigieg calls for quadrupling clean R&D to $25 billion per year by 2025.
GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT: A
Buttigieg proposes a $250 fund to invest in international green infrastructure projects. Each $ from the government would need to be matched by a private $. His plan calls for a border adjustment tariff and rejoining the Paris accords.
DOMESTIC DEPLOYMENT: B
Buttigieg calls for a bit less than $1T in expenditure,a clean mandate for federal procurement, and a 30% tax incentive for improving clean buildings. He also advocates a carbon tax. Unfortunately, carbon taxes don’t work very well. They have good value for spurring innovation, but they’re not effective at spurring rapid adoption (This is an argument that deserves a much longer treatment). All in all, this plan is a bit light.
Amy Klobuchar
Primary Sources: Klobuchar’s Climate Plan
Overall Grade: C+
Klobuchar’s plan overall is essentially a series of small enhancements to what Obama was able to accomplish. Her plan’s main ambition is to institute a carbon tax, like the one the Obama administration tried to pass in 2010.
GREEN GOALS AND MANDATES: C+
GREEN R&D: C
Klobuchar is supportive of Green R&D. It seems likely she will request increases to it in her budget. Further details are a few and far between.
GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT: B-
The main positive here is that Klobuchar supports a border adjustment tariff to ensure that the USA does not import carbon emissions.
DOMESTIC DEPLOYMENT: B
Klobuchar proposes a $1T infrastructure program focused on clean energy infrastructure.
She also proposes a carbon tax.
Tom Steyer
Primary Sources: Steyer’s Climate Plan 1 and 2 and GreenPeace survey
Overall Grade: A-
Tom Steyer’s presents a moderately ambitions and comprehensive vision for going green that will fall short of meeting the 50% reduction in 2030 needed. The plan is on track for meeting a 2050 zero carbon goal. His plan significantly supports early deployment of green technology, with a $2T energy infrastructure modernization plan. Steyer hopes that the $2T in public investment will mobilize a much larger quantity of private investment.
GREEN GOALS AND MANDATES: B
Steyer sets ambitous goals for new vehicles, new electricity, and new buildings, aiming at 2030 to 2035, with full decarbonization by 2045. No goals are set for economy-wide decarbonization before 2045.
GREEN R&D: B+
Steyer aims to triple clean energy R&D. While he doesn’t give a cost number, my estimate is this is a $130B plan over 10 years.
GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT: A
Tom Steyer has an aggressive global plan. And by aggressive I don’t mean just that he’s going to introduce a border adjustment tariff, or that he’s willing to put $200B in capital forward towards financing international green development. Quote:
“Tom’s administration will work with the global community to create and define environmental crimes against humanity, and develop a process for enforcement.”
Crimes against humanity justify economic sanctions and even invasion. The government of Brazil recently became paranoid that France would invade them over Amazon deforestation. Well, I don’t know if French President Emmanuel Macron would… but Tom Steyer might.
DOMESTIC DEPLOYMENT: A
Steyer splits domestic deployment into multiple categories, such as grid modernization and clean transportation infrastructure. It’s very difficult to tell how exactly he would spend the money, because usually he says a certain amount of private or public capital will be “mobilized” for a challenge. The fraction of that he thinks will be provided by the public sector is unclear.
In total Steyer promises $2.3 T will be spent. That’s a fairly large number, even if it’s unclear exactly how and where it will be spent.
