Hillary Clinton's Climate and Energy Policies, Explained

August 01, 2016

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by David Roberts (Vox) ... I'm going to break this down as a series of numbered lists — not one, not two, but five lists of three:

The three key facts the campaign took as starting points
The three overarching goals of the plan
Three numerical targets by which the success of the plan will be judged
Three strategies to get there
Three issues (e.g., fracking) environmentalists are keen to hear more about

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3) The next president must do more, and Congress won't be much help.

The measures Obama has put in place do not currently have the US on a trajectory to hit its 2025 goal, much less the more ambitious goals that lie beyond it. So the next administration must do more.

And Congress — or at least the House of Representatives — is likely to be controlled by Republicans in 2016, which means comprehensive climate and energy legislation will be off the table.

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Goals

1) Close the gap.

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2) Make sure the transition works for all Americans.

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According to the campaign, that means a number of things: economic development for coal communities, a focus on low-income households and communities of color, expanding union density in the clean energy space, and helping states figure out net metering and retail rate design issues.

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Numerical Targets

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3) "Reduce American oil consumption by a third through cleaner fuels and more efficient cars, boilers, ships and trucks."

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Policy

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Now we get to the policy.

1) Defending, implementing, and extending federal standards.

There is a veritable laundry list here, but the campaign emphasizes a few things in particular.

The first is fully and effectively implementing the Clean Power Plan.

Second is fuel economy standards. The EPA will be doing a midterm evaluation of light-duty vehicle standards during Clinton's first term; standards for heavy-duty vehicles have been proposed but not finalized.

Also on the list:

Methane regulations on existing natural gas wells. (Obama recently implemented standards for new gas wells.) Also repairing and replacing outdated natural gas distribution pipelines, to improve safety and reduce leaks.
Implementing the Renewable Fuel Standard in a way that will "spur the development of advanced biofuels and expand the overall contribution that renewable fuels make to our national fuel supply."

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2) Offering challenge grants to states, cities, and rural communities that exceed federal standards.

This is the other half of a policy approach the campaign calls "flexible federalism." If federal standards serve as the floor, then challenge grants serve as inducement to reach higher.

The grants would come through a program called the Clean Energy Challenge, funded at $60 billion over 10 years.

The CEC would offer competitive, outcome-based block grants to states, cities, and communities that are "willing to lead on clean energy and exceed federal standards," says Houser, "whether that's through exceeding the target set under the Clean Power Plan, driving fuel economy and electric vehicles more aggressively than required by federal standards, leading on building efficiency, or improvements in industrial efficiency."

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The Clinton campaign expects the grants to elicit cost sharing and in-kind contributions from the municipalities receiving them, thus leveraging up their impact.

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More broadly, Clinton believes natural gas is a "bridge" — an intermediate step — to decarbonization.

That position has come under heavy fire during the primary, but the campaign defends it.

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They highlight the potential for natural gas to continue reducing carbon and other pollutants in the power sector, where natural gas also plays an important role in balancing variable renewable energy sources, and in the transportation sector, where it is a cleaner alternative to diesel and gasoline.

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First, investments in natural gas pipeline infrastructure can be leveraged later to transport lower-carbon biogas or synthetic natural gas, which will be useful in cleaning up heavy-duty transportation, heating, and industry.

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2) What about "keep it in the ground"?

I asked about the new enthusiasm among climate activists for the "keep it in the ground" strategy of blocking or shutting down fossil fuel supply projects.

The campaign pointed to places where Clinton believes oil and gas production is not worth the risk, including the Arctic and the Atlantic coast, and noted that she supports Obama's moratorium on new coal leasing, as the leasing program is reformed.

She does not, however, support a blanket ban on new oil and gas leases on public land, as called for in a bill from Sanders and Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon.

The campaign points out that the vast majority of oil and gas production in the US occurs on private land. Oil and gas production on public land has actually declined under the Obama administration; all the growth has been on private land. With that in mind, their primary short-term focus is on reducing economy-wide oil consumption.

Nonetheless, a campaign spokesperson says Clinton "believes we should be on a long-term path to a future where there is no extraction of fossil fuels on public lands" and that "our public lands can be an engine of job creation and a 21st-century clean energy economy." READ MORE and MORE (Real Clear Energy) and MORE (The Hill) and MORE (TribLive)