If the federal government and U.S. Congress were to adopt a direct-spending approach to infrastructure development in renewables, energy efficiency and promoting the closure of coal-fired power plants, U.S. emissions could be reduced by about 13% from current levels in the year 2030, the Center for American Progress said in a Sept. 3 report.
The U.S. is not on pace to meet its economywide emissions reduction targets under the Paris Agreement on climate change, the report noted. Further, President Donald Trump has pledged to pull the U.S. from the Paris accord. But if the government were to tackle emissions by the measures outlined in the report, annual greenhouse gas emissions could decrease by about 830 million metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions in the year 2030, the left-leaning Center for American Progress, or CAP, estimated.
"CAP has consistently argued that federal infrastructure legislation should focus primarily on direct investment opportunities and not on tax credits or public-private partnership approaches," the paper said. Among other reasons, "the overwhelming majority of infrastructure needs are not well suited to alternative procurement approaches."
The report urged Congress to accelerate renewable energy deployment by reviving and updating a program that offers grants in lieu of tax credits similar to what was offered in the Obama-era fiscal stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Tax Act. Under the funding mechanism envisioned in the report, grants in lieu of tax credits could support 240 GW of new onshore wind, solar and storage infrastructure at a cost of less than $15 per ton of emissions reductions.
The report also recommended that the Tennessee Valley Authority retire its remaining coal assets and replace the more than 7,000 MW worth of generation with onshore wind at a cost of $10.5 billion for new projects while avoiding $7.9 billion in coal fuel costs over 10 years.
In addition, the report said the federal government should forgive the $7 billion in outstanding loans that electric cooperatives owe the U.S. Agriculture Department's Rural Utilities Service for coal-fired power projects. Forgiving those debts would allow many of the co-ops to close their coal plants and could cut emissions by at least 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, or CO2e. Moreover, Congress should authorize the Rural Utilities Service and the U.S. Department of Energy to offer grants to install renewable power capacity equivalent to the potential of those retired coal plants and to fund grid improvement needed to transition to the cleaner sources, the report suggested.
The federal government could reduce emissions from the transportation sector by helping school districts and cities purchase electric buses and investing in electric vehicle charging infrastructure, the paper said. If the Low and No Emission Vehicle program was revised to cover the price difference between an electric and conventional gas-fired bus, and overall prices decline as expected, an investment of $57 billion over 10 years would enable the purchase of 480,000 electric transit and school buses, yielding 8 million metric tons of CO2e reductions in 2030, the report said.
CAP also suggested that the government make energy efficiency improvements and investments in on-site clean energy generation in public, commercial and residential buildings, and create a grant program to support industrial energy efficiency improvements and electrified equipment purchases.
