Legal Pathways to Biden's Climate Goals

• Author: Michael B. Gerrard
• Position: Professor of environmental and energy law at Columbia Law School, and faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law
• Pages: 58-58

58 | THE ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, September/October 2021.

Copyright © 2021, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.

THE DEBATE

to build new solar (both utility-scale

and rooftop) and wind (both on-

shore and oshore) facilities, as well

as more geothermal, hydropower,

and other non-fossil technologies.

e existing nuclear eet needs to

keep running as long as it can oper-

ate safely. A comparably massive

program of new transmission lines

is needed to bring the power from

these new sources to where it is

needed, coupled with storage to ll

in the gaps when there is no wind

or sun. According to the Zero Car-

bon Action Project, that will require

3,000 gigawatts of new genera-

tion by 2050 — an average of 100

gigawatts a year. (One good-sized

nuclear power plant generates about

one gigawatt.)

Energy eciency. We need a 40

percent reduction in per capita en-

ergy demand. is would mostly

come from improvements in the ef-

ciency of appliances, buildings, and

all manner of industrial operations.

Electrication. Most uses that

now rely on fossil fuels need to

switch to electricity. e biggest

sector here is transport. is means

that all new cars and SUVs need

to be electric by about 2035, with

trucks and buses not far behind (un-

less hydrogen or other technologies

do the job). Electricity needs to be

used instead of oil and natural gas

to heat buildings and water; all new

buildings need to be all-electric, and

over time older buildings need to

be converted. e added electricity

demand that all this will create (even

after aggressive energy eciency

programs) is one reason we need so

much new generation and transmis-

sion.

Carbon capture and removal. It is

dicult to abate the emissions from

certain industrial operations, such as

making cement and steel. For these,

and for any remaining natural gas

power plants, we need to capture

the carbon dioxide before it leaves

the stack, and either use or seques-

ter it. We also need to remove large

amounts of the carbon dioxide that

is already in the atmosphere. Some

of this can be achieved by planting

more trees and better managing for-

ests. Some can be done through im-

proved agricultural practices, which

will also reduce methane emissions.

Beyond that, we need various tech-

nologies now being developed to

draw carbon dioxide from the atmo-

sphere.

Non-CO2 pollutants. Carbon

dioxide is not the only pollutant

that contributes to climate change.

Methane, uorinated gases, nitrous

oxide, and black carbon are also im-

portant, and each can be drastically

reduced.

All of this will require a great

deal of new infrastructure. President

Biden’s American Jobs Plan, if en-

acted by Congress, would be an im-

portant move in that direction.

Congress has not passed a major

new environmental law since 1990.

e partisan paralysis since then has

been a major obstacle to progress in

the ght against climate change (and

many other things). ere are sev-

eral items Congress could enact that

would greatly assist in meeting the

2050 goals. ese include an econ-

omy-wide carbon pricing system;

a clean electricity standard; stricter

command-and-control regulations

of air pollution; more subsidies for

clean energy; and elimination of

subsidies for fossil fuels. None of

these would do the whole job, but

any would greatly help.

Meanwhile, many states, cities,

and corporations are making great

eorts. But the federal govern-

ment must take the lead — both

the president (who has stepped up)

and Congress (for which we are still

waiting).

Michael B. Gerrard is a professor of envi-

ronmental and energy law at Columbia Law

School, and faculty director of the Sabin Center

for Climate Change Law.

Legal Pathways

to Biden’s

Climate Goals

By Michael B. Gerrard

Achieving President Biden’s

goal of net-zero green-

house gas emissions by

2050, with interim targets

of being halfway there by 2030

and having entirely clean electric-

ity by 2035, is possible with law

and technologies that already exist

or can be readily imagined. In the

process, many more jobs would be

created than lost, and aspects of the

environment beyond climate change

would be greatly improved. But it is

a massive undertaking.

e nature of this task was

spelled out in detail in a prescient

report, Pathways to Deep Decarbon-

ization in the United States, issued in

2014 and 2015 by the Sustainable

Development Solutions Network

and the Institute of Sustainable De-

velopment and International Rela-

tions. Much of the same team, led

again by Jim Williams, prepared an

updated version in 2020 as part of

the Zero Carbon Action Project.

Based on the 2014/2015 reports,

in late 2015 John Dernbach and I

began work on an edited volume

that the Environmental Law In-

stitute published in 2019, Legal

Pathways to Deep Decarbonization

in the United States. It analyzed how

federal, state, and local law and pri-

vate governance need to change for

the United States to achieve goals

that are very similar to those that the

Biden campaign would announce a

year later.

Five pillars underlie this eort.

Electricity decarbonization. In gen-

erating electricity, we need to elimi-

nate all use of coal and almost all

use of gas unless it is coupled with

carbon capture and sequestration,

or comes from biological sources.

is will require a massive program