Joe Biden's plan includes a considerable focus on just energy transition. "The framework’s $555 billion investment represents the largest single investment in our clean energy economy in history, across buildings, transportation, industry, electricity, agriculture, and climate-smart practices across lands and waters." The Biden administration includes consideration of how the cost and the financial benefits of the energy transition will be distributed, a focus on utilizing the transition to develop jobs and industry in the US, advance environmental justice, and devote considerable attention and resources to coastal restoration, forest management, and soil conservation.
The plan is notable and inspiring, but there are still many questions to be raised. Among them, as the Energy Rights Project researchers have previously discussed in these media briefs, renewable energy technologies still require rare earth materials that have problematic industries of extraction. Biden's plan mentions a focus on environmental justice but does not explicitly spell out how the issues surrounding how renewable industries will address the equity concerns surrounding renewable energy infrastructure.
Joe Biden, "President Biden Announces the Build Back Better Framework", contributed by James Adams, The Energy Rights Project, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, last modified 17 November 2021, accessed 20 April 2024. https://energyrights.info/content/president-biden-announces-build-back-better-framework
Critical Commentary
Joe Biden's plan includes a considerable focus on just energy transition. "The framework’s $555 billion investment represents the largest single investment in our clean energy economy in history, across buildings, transportation, industry, electricity, agriculture, and climate-smart practices across lands and waters." The Biden administration includes consideration of how the cost and the financial benefits of the energy transition will be distributed, a focus on utilizing the transition to develop jobs and industry in the US, advance environmental justice, and devote considerable attention and resources to coastal restoration, forest management, and soil conservation.
The plan is notable and inspiring, but there are still many questions to be raised. Among them, as the Energy Rights Project researchers have previously discussed in these media briefs, renewable energy technologies still require rare earth materials that have problematic industries of extraction. Biden's plan mentions a focus on environmental justice but does not explicitly spell out how the issues surrounding how renewable industries will address the equity concerns surrounding renewable energy infrastructure.