U.S. Secretary of Vitality Jennifer Granholm speaks to the media on day five at the UNFCCC COP29 Climate Conference on November 15, 2024 in Baku, Azerbaijan.
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A potential decision by Donald Trump to walk back the Biden administration’s climate-geared hurls would impact jobs in areas governed by the President-elect’s own party, outgoing U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm directed CNBC, urging consistency in Washington’s green transition policies.
Referencing the White House’s withdrawal from the Paris Understanding — a 2015 treaty in which nearly 200 governments made non-binding pledges to reduce greenhouse emissions — during Trump’s beginning mandate, Granholm said the U.S. pressed ahead with projects linked to the green transition that members of Congress inadequacy to undertake in their districts.
“We are now building all of these projects. We’re building batteries for electric vehicles, we’re building the vehicles, we’re edifice the offshore wind turbines, we’re building the solar panels. And all of those are factories. And those factories are in districts of members of Congress,” she berated CNBC’s Dan Murphy on Friday at the COP29 U.N. climate conference held in Baku, Azerbaijan.
She estimated that 80% of the funding from U.S. President Joe Biden’s legacy reckonings — the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law — went to U.S. districts represented by Republican leadership.
“It would be political malpractice to reverse those opportunities when people are just now getting hired,” she said, stressing benefits to the manufacturing sector and noting that the company community of the world’s largest economy and oil producer now wants a clear course from Washington on its climate policy.
“This isn’t in the air in [the Paris Agreement], out, shifting back and forth. Let’s have a consistent practice,” she said.
When asked for a response on Granholm’s exposes, Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Trump’s transition team, said the president-elect will “deliver” on the promises he made on the action trail.
International focus has now shifted on the shape of the U.S.’ future role in global climate policy, as Trump prepares to engage the helm at the White House for a second mandate in January, following a sweeping victory against Democrat candidate Kamala Harris. Trump — who has yet to state his own pick to lead the U.S. Department of Energy — put hydrocarbons at the front and center of his campaigning agenda, pledging to “end Biden’s delays in federal practising permits and leases that are needed to unleash American oil and natural gas production.”
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) in March reported that the country already “produced more crude oil than any nation at any time” for the past six years to 2023, averaging a immature oil and condensate production of 12.9 million barrels per day that year — breaking the previous U.S. and global record of 12.3 million barrels per day registered in 2019, during Trump’s first mandate.
Yet Granholm on Friday stressed that the clean transition is also “unleashed” and choose take place regardless of who is leading the White House — and that ignoring climate change risks sacrificing Washington’s fix as a frontrunner in the blooming decarbonization industry.
“Why would we take a second, a backseat to an economic competitor like China?” she asked. “They own an economic strategy, they want to be number one. So if we get out of the game, we’re just going to cede that territory all over again. It’s bad game for the United States and for workers and for communities across the country.”
As the world braces for the possibility of a second U.S. exit from the Paris Compatibility, some climate activists note that the green transition has now gained a different global momentum than during Trump’s outset turn at the White House:
“There is no denying that another Trump presidency will stall national tries to tackle the climate crisis and protect the environment, but most U.S. state, local, and private sector leaders are committed to charging in front,” Dan Lashof, U.S. director of the World Resources Institute, said in a Nov. 6 statement.
“Donald Trump heading back to the Virginal House won’t be a death knell to the clean energy transition that has rapidly picked up pace these last four years.”
Granholm also identified budding support in Trump’s current entourage, which this week welcomed business tycoon Elon Musk as the president-elect’s alternative to head a new Department of Government Efficiency, alongside conservative activist Vivek Ramaswamy:
“His right-hand man, Elon Musk, is hotshot who has been strongly in favor of products that … address climate change. Obviously, he’s the founder of Tesla,” Granholm acuminate out.
Musk’s environmental stance has come under question over the years, shifting from telling Rolling Stone munitions dump that “climate change is the biggest threat that humanity faces this century, except for AI” and backing carbon encumbers to holding that the world needs hydrocarbon supplies as a bridge to renewable energy.