Biden’s Clean-Industry Grants Punch Above Their Weight
The $6 billion for projects aimed at decarbonizing manufacturing is a minuscule amount overall but stands to pay off in a big way.
Decarbonizing industrial processes is vital and difficult.
Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images North AmericaOne measure of success for President Joe Biden’s green energy agenda is that $6 billion of funding for new projects doesn’t even sound like that much anymore. The conditional grants announced this week for 33 projects aimed at decarbonizing industrial processes are equivalent to perhaps 1% of the headline clean-energy budgets of the Inflation Reduction Act and bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. They should punch above their weight, nonetheless.
Making the manufacturing of metals, cement and chemicals green is especially tough, not least because of their high heat requirements, for which fossil fuels are perfectly suited. Doing so is essential for any net-zero plans, however, because industrial emissions are one of the big three sources of US greenhouse gas emissions; at roughly a quarter, they are almost as big as for the electric power sector. Yet, in terms of clean-energy investment, industry is a sideshow.