Fact Checking Trump’s and Biden’s Energy Transition Plans

In the presidential candidates’ final debate, President Trump said Vice President Biden’s energy plan could cost tens of millions of jobs. Wind is “extremely expensive” and solar “doesn’t quite have it yet,” he added. Trump avoided answering a question about the health impacts of polluting industries.

There is “a moral obligation” to address the climate crisis and transition to net zero emissions electricity by 2035, Biden countered. That will create “millions of new good paying jobs” as polluting industries are transitioned to wind and solar.

The president’s plan is only a series of White House press releases announcing executive orders and legislative proposals. They report initiatives to increase oil and coal, though the use of those resources continues to decline.

The president takes credit for pollution and emissions reductions initiatives in place before 2017 . He also issued executive orders without enforcement provisions that allowed the private sector to exploit protected lands and waters .

The Biden Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice plan promises executive orders, legislation, and regulation that will protect the environment. It would invest $2 trillion over four years to accelerate clean energy growth and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It also commits the U.S. to rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, helping transition fossil fuel industry workers to new jobs, and also prioritizing environmental justice.

Under an analysis of the candidates’ plans by the U.C. Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy 2035 Report , its “No New Policy” scenario can represent the White House plan because it is based on current policies and 55% emissions-free electricity in 2035, said Quantum Energy founder and research scientist Daniel Howard. The report’s “90% Clean” scenario, which assesses feasibility of achieving 90% emissions-free electricity by 2035, can represent the Biden plan.

The 2035 study modeled Biden’s proposed transition by 2035 to a generation mix of 70% wind and solar, 20% hydropower and nuclear, and 10% natural gas. It concluded the proposal would protect reliability, add 500,000 more jobs every year , avoid hundreds of billions of dollars in health and environmental costs, and would lower wholesale electricity costs 10%. In the debate, the president condescendingly raised doubts about those projections but Howard’s study and the 2035 study show those doubts are baseless.

The costs

The 2035 study showed electricity from a low carbon power system is now less expensive than high carbon electricity, Energy Innovation VP and 2035 study contributor Sonia Aggarwal said. Adding the health and environmental cost savings makes it almost “shockingly” less expensive.

But the 2035 study only considered major pollutants, Howard said. His Total View lifecycle modeling found the Biden plan’s elimination by 2035 of most pollutants and carbon emissions from electricity generation’s mining, manufacturing, shipping, fueling, and disposal makes it “an order of magnitude cheaper than the Trump plan.”

Costs to replace fossil fuel infrastructure with renewables in the Biden plan would be $261 billion, as opposed to the $192 billion likely to be invested under Trump administration policies, Howard acknowledged.

But the Biden environmental and health policy costs would total $592 billion and decline substantially when a 90% emissions-free infrastructure was in place in 2035.

Total health and environmental costs under Trump policies were projected to be $969 billion and they would be unlikely to change because emissions and pollutants would change little, Howard said.

That is the key finding, he said. The $810 billion total cost of Biden’s policies through 2035 are 30% less than the $1.161 trillion total cost of Trump policies. Once 90% of emissions and pollutants from electricity generation are eliminated, “it will be far cheaper.” Other conclusions in the 2035 report raise reasonable doubts about the new technologies’ feasibility, jobs, and reliability.

Too good to be true?

The market has already approved the transition to renewables, said Mona Dajani a partner in the Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman law firm, who leads their renewable energy practice . Even most major players in the oil and gas sector see the value proposition and are discussing investments, she said.

Clean energy investments reached $20 billion in 2019, four times more than in 2018. A national policy commitment will accelerate that, she added.

The coal industry job losses that the Trump administration tried and failed to stop show the market’s preference, agreed Michael Kadish, co-founder of clean energy consultant Insight Power Partners .

Fossil industry jobs cannot be protected, Dajani said. The Biden plan invests in transitioning to clean energy jobs , which are likely to pay far more than the national median salary for all jobs of $39,800/year. The country’s fastest job growth is in the area of wind turbine technicians, which pay $52,900/year. Solar installations are the third fastest area of job growth, paying $109,800/year. Both are projected to grow over 50% in the next decade.

The 2035 study found the Biden New Policy case creates almost 749,000 jobs, far more than the Trump No New Policy case, Quantum’s Howard added.

And reliability is “simply an engineering challenge” already being addressed with battery and long duration storage and new transmission, Dajani said.

The Biden plan’s emphasis on storage and national transmission would “actually reduce the chances of a blackout” by allowing clean electricity to be dispatched “whenever and wherever it is needed most,” Kadish added.

Biden infrastructure costs could raise electricity rates as much as $0.015/kWh in 2035, Howard acknowledged. But the transition could save $0.15/kWh to $0.20/kWh in environmental, health, and extreme weather event costs. “And if we don't make that change, we are going to face devastating impacts from the climate crisis on the quality of life of our children and grandchildren.

-- Herman K. Trabish

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Fact Checking Trump’s and Biden’s Energy Transition Plans

Herman Trabish

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