Skip to Content
Climate change and energy

The Democrats’ climate-change plans, compared

Why an issue that hardly came up in the last US election has become the price of admission in the 2020 presidential primary.
Elizabeth Warren
Elizabeth WarrenAp images

A few weeks ago, Reuters reported that Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden’s camp was crafting a “middle ground” climate-change policy that more or less returned the US to the pre-Trump plan for rolling back emissions.

But the plan he unveiled on Tuesday would go well beyond the climate policies of the Obama-Biden era, striving to completely eliminate greenhouse-gas emissions in the next few decades.

The turnabout, which follows a public torching of Biden’s middle-ground trial balloon, is the latest sign of just how high the climate bar has been raised for anyone who hopes to clinch the Democratic nomination.

It’s a stark shift from the last presidential campaign, when climate change barely came up in the debates. Recent polls have found that climate has become a “very important” issue among Democratic-leaning voters, rising significantly from the 2016 election year.

“It’s not other people. It’s not in the future. Climate change affects us in the here and now.”

Observers believe a number of factors could be driving the growing concerns, including reactions to the policies of the Trump administration, the success of youth-driven climate protests, the attention surrounding the Green New Deal proposal, the rising recognition of how climate change affected events like last year’s fires and heat waves, and the UN IPCC’s recent conclusions that the world could exceed 1.5 ˚C of warming by 2030.

Climate change increasingly seems like an imminent and direct threat rather than an abstract and distant one, says Leah Stokes, an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who focuses on environmental and energy politics.

“It’s not other people. It’s not in the future,” she says. “Climate change affects us in the here and now.”

The Biden plan

The five-point plan from the former vice president and current Democratic front-runner sets the ambitious goal of reaching a “100% clean energy economy and net-zero emissions by 2050,” and embraces a wide portfolio of technologies to achieve it. That includes emerging and somewhat controversial tools like small modular nuclear reactors, systems for capturing carbon emissions from power plants and the air, and the use of hydrogen to store excess electricity from solar and wind power.

Biden’s plan would spend $1.7 trillion on clean energy, environmental justice, and infrastructure, including $400 billion for research and development. The funds would come from reversing the Trump administration’s tax cuts, ending fossil-fuel subsidies, and closing other tax loopholes, according to the campaign.

To Stokes and others, Biden’s suddenly strengthened plan seemed more like a reaction to the earlier criticism than any newfound heartfelt climate commitment, as it cobbled together (or worse) high points from the plans of other Democratic contenders and additional sources.

Warren’s “Green Manufacturing Plan”

Not to be outdone, Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, a distant fourth in recent polling, unveiled her own “Green Manufacturing Plan” on Tuesday. It would pour $2 trillion over the next decade into “green research, manufacturing, and exporting,” also earmarking $400 billion for clean-energy R&D, in what she describes as a “Green Apollo Program.”

The main priority of her plan is to make the US a major manufacturer and exporter of clean-energy technologies, to create jobs domestically and help push down emissions globally. That reads as an implicit effort to confront China’s rise as the global leader in manufacturing green technologies like solar panels, lithium-ion batteries, and electric vehicles, says David Hart, director of the Center for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy at George Mason University.

Some were skeptical of how easy it would be to pull off such a global reordering of the energy landscape.

“The focus on American-made technologies strikes me as ambitious given the dismal US track record on clean tech manufacturing,” tweeted Jonas Nahm, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, who focuses on the energy transition in China. “[It] also completely disregards the fact that these products are produced in truly global supply chains.”

Warren previously cosponsored the Green New Deal, which also sets a target of achieving “net-zero emissions” by 2050, and announced plans last month to cut US military emissions.

Tuesday’s announcement called for “widespread domestic and international adoption of clean, renewable, and emission-free energy technology.” Like the Green New Deal, this technology-agnostic language allows for nuclear power and carbon capture. But it doesn’t specifically advocate for them in as direct a way as the Biden plan does.

Loftier funding, faster timetables

A number of other Democratic candidates have either cosponsored the Green New Deal or announced their own sweeping climate policy packages. Among them:

  • Former Texas representative Beto O’Rourke’s climate plan calls for net-zero emissions by 2050, and $1.2 trillion in federal investments over the next decade, including $250 billion for R&D. The proposal distinguishes itself in its emphasis on climate resiliency, focusing attention and funding on preparing communities for increasingly common or severe fires, floods, droughts, and hurricanes.
  • Washington governor Jay Inslee, a long-shot contender, delivered one of the most detailed plans with one of the most aggressive timetables. His proposal moves the net-zero carbon emissions goal up to 2045, while requiring all electricity, new cars, light-duty trucks and buses, and new commercial and residential buildings to be carbon neutral or emissions free by 2030. It calls for $3 trillion in federal investments in the next 10 years.
  • Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, running second to Biden, is calling for passage of the Green New Deal, as well as banning natural-gas fracking and any new fossil-fuel infrastructure, and ending exports of coal, natural gas, and crude oil. He has been one of the most outspoken candidates in rejecting nuclear power, calling for a moratorium on license renewals for existing nuclear plants.

The real test, of course, isn’t which candidate can outbid the others in calling for deeper investments or earlier deadlines. It’s whether these climate commitments persist into the general election, and can be turned into binding and effective laws under the next administration.

This story was updated to clarify Beto O'Rourke's proposed level of federal investment.

Deep Dive

Climate change and energy

How one mine could unlock billions in EV subsidies

The Inflation Reduction Act is starting to transform the US economy. To understand how, we tallied up the potential tax credits available as the nickel from a single mine flows through the supply chain.

Why hydrogen is losing the race to power cleaner cars

Batteries are dominating zero-emissions vehicles, and the fuel has better uses elsewhere.

This town’s mining battle reveals the contentious path to a cleaner future

The world needs to dig up far more minerals to meet climate goals. But mining poses environmental dangers that are bitterly dividing communities.

How virtual power plants are shaping tomorrow’s energy system

By orchestrating EVs, batteries, and smart home devices, VPPs can help make the grid cleaner and more efficient.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.