Biden budget tackles 'climate crisis' with focus on jobs, infrastructure and research

President Biden's proposed budget includes billions to fight climate change, create clean energy jobs, fund research into clean energy and replenish agencies that suffered deep cuts during the Trump administration.

Despite expected pushback from a deeply divided Congress, the budget, announced Monday, signals an administration continuing its commitment to fighting global warming with a focus on jobs, lowering energy costs and helping people in communities that have suffered the brunt of climate change and pollution.

The budget proposal includes $5.8 trillion in funding, of which $44.9 billion would go toward tackling what it calls "the climate crisis," an increase of $16.7 billion over the 2021 budget spread across multiple agencies and government entities. 

While not as sweeping as Biden's ambitious but stalled Build Back Better social spending and climate policy legislation, the proposed budget is part of a "solid and reasonable" answer to climate change, said Derek Walker, vice president for climate at the Environmental Defense Fund.

"There's a lot of stuff here," he said, noting Biden's Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act, which passed last year. If the administration can also pass a much-diminished Build Back Better bill, "it will move the ball substantially down the field toward resolving the climate crisis." 

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While no president gets everything they want in proposed spending, the plan is a centrist budget that might have some success getting passed, said Steve Cohen, a professor at Columbia University’s Earth Institute.

"It will be interesting to see how much he gets. It's a big budget, and there are a lot of things in here for a lot of different constituencies," Cohen said. "Budgets are the ultimate political process."

U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said budgets reflect values.

“The White House budget request that President Biden published today offers the clearest possible reminder that the Biden administration’s far-left values are fundamentally disconnected from what American families actually need,” McConnell said.

The Biden administration has already set ambitious climate goals, including cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 65% by 2030 and eliminating carbon from the U.S. electricity sector by 2035.

Much of the proposed budget zeros in on the ways in which fighting climate change also can build American manufacturing and jobs in areas such as solar power, electric vehicles, wind energy and retrofitting older homes to make them more energy-efficient. 

"This administration is really set up to promote environmental projection and clean energy," Cohen said. "They have an all-of-government approach. Every agency is working on this."

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In part to avoid partisan wrangling, the administration has focused on using the federal procurement process to push its climate agenda, getting federal agencies to put their buying dollars into sustainable products, Cohen said.

"They're using every bit of leverage they have," he said. "The federal government is so large that it can have a transformative impact on the creation of markets."

The budget as written includes more than $250 million to expand deployment of solar, wind and geothermal projects on public lands. To support the move to American production of the necessary infrastructure, the budget includes $200 million to launch a U.S. Solar Manufacturing Accelerator. Europe created something similar in 2020.

The proposal includes $17 billion to support research into climate science and energy, including $9 billion for the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. Overall, the Energy Department's Office of Science budget could grow 11%.

The goal is to encourage U.S. preeminence in developing the technologies that will allow the world to transition to carbon-neutral energy, the proposed budget says.

That could play well as global energy markets convulse around Russia's war in Ukraine. 

"This budget is a call for assertive action on climate now. Russia’s savage invasion of Ukraine makes breaking our dependence on fossil fuels a strategic imperative," said John Bowman, director of government affairs for the Natural Resources Defense Fund.

The proposal also includes savings projected by repealing tax breaks for fossil fuel companies. A similar plan was floated last year and rejected by Congress. 

The plan also includes money to improve the prediction of extreme weather and climate events to allow businesses and communities to prepare.

There is $2.3 billion for NOAA, for next-generation weather satellites and $2.4 billion to NASA to develop an Earth System Observatory. There's also $13 million for the Environmental Protection Agency so it can better predict where smoke from wildfires could harm residents.

The proposal makes good on Biden's pledge to reintegrate the United States into global efforts to fight climate change, including more than $11 billion for international climate finance. 

It also includes significant funding increases for agencies such as the EPA, the Department of Energy and the Department of the Interior. All faced deep cuts during the Trump administration. 

"The thing that surprised me was that the agencies need to be so rebuilt just to bring them back," said Derek Walker, vice president for climate at the Environmental Defense Fund. "Over 16,000 people left the EPA during the Trump administration. That made the agency smaller than it had been in 40 years."