Experts Tell Biden: Your Climate Goals Require a Carbon Price
The National Academies published a comprehensive list of policies the U.S. can enact to transform the energy system and right historical inequality.
To achieve a grid that’s 75 percent carbon free by 2030, the National Academies group says, “would require an average pace of wind and solar installation that each year matches or exceeds the record historical yearly deployment of these technologies.”
Photographer: Daniel Acker/BloombergMeeting the climate goals of President Joe Biden will require setting a national cost for carbon pollution and spending heavily on social programs to assist Americans hurt by the clean-energy transition. Those are the findings in a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the latest group to lay out a detailed strategy for making the U.S. economy carbon-neutral by 2050.
The goal to be carbon-neutral by mid-century — which the global scientific community says is the only way to avert the worst effects of climate change — has been widely embraced in the private sector and by nine of the top 10 biggest economies, including the U.S. Yet 30 years is very little time to wind down and replace an energy system that's taken generations to build. Urgent steps and market signals are needed, the report said, such as a mechanism to place a price on carbon emissions.