Election 2024: But What About Heavy Industry Emissions?
How has the Biden/Harris Administration dealt with presumed to be hard-to-abate industrial emissions?
Four years ago, things looked bleak for federal action in the industrial sector.
Biden and Harris’ current plan is light on specific climate action for industry as well. The committed Kigali Amendment and Paris Accord ratifications will have flow-down impacts of course. There are research dollars for low-carbon concrete and further money to be thrown at carbon capture use and storage, but nothing substantive. Unfortunately, while Harris’ plan included a price on carbon, it’s unlikely to be on the table for the first term.
As noted earlier in this series, an attempt was made to bring a carbon price to the United States under the guise of an anti-China carbon border adjustment mechanism that snuck domestic pricing into the fine print, but fossil-Democratic pols like Manchin axed that before it made it to Congress.
While the carbon price died in committee, a price on leaked methane was introduced, $900 per ton starting in January 2024 for big emitters, equivalent to $36 per ton of CO2, rising to $1,500 in 2026. The Biden–Harris administration has also rolled out stringent new regulations targeting methane…
