Politics

DOE Official Says Biden’s Climate Pledge Will Cost $10 Trillion

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Jigar Shah, the director of the Loan Program Office in President Joe Biden’s Department of Energy (DOE), said Biden’s pledge to cut emissions in half this decade will cost $10 trillion, according to The New York Times.

Shah’s office controls the flow of federal loans for companies working on new energy technologies, and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) drastically expanded his office’s spending budget from $40 billion to $400 billion, according to the NYT. The IRA could cover about $1 trillion of Biden’s emissions-cutting ambitions, but the remaining funds would have to come from the private sector, Shah told the outlet.

The Loan Program Office is making money for the government rather than losing it because of new, shrewder loaning practices, Shaw claimed, according to the NYT.

“The failed projects of the past clearly wouldn’t get through the office this time around,” he said. “Now we can look at our portfolio of $38 billion worth of loans and say, actually, we have been pretty good stewards of capital, and we actually make money for the federal government.”

The office is reviewing applications for $121 billion in loans from 141 energy projects, some of which are coming from fossil fuel companies, and from red states, according to the NYT.

“We’re not the smartest people in the room,” he said, according to the NYT. “The folks who are the smartest people are the American innovators and entrepreneurs who put their sweat and tears behind something and come to us to get that last bit of help they need to get to the finish line.”

Biden promised to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half by the end of 2030 in April 2022 as part of a broader climate-related push from his administration. He has also said he aims to put the country on track for zero net emissions by 2050. Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed new emissions rules Thursday morning that would effectively require coal-fired power plants to use carbon capture technology by 2040 or shut down.

The DOE did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.