Tucked into President Joe Biden’s ambitious, sweeping climate commitments is a crucially important goal that dates back to his campaign: Transforming the US electric grid to run entirely on clean energy by 2035.
The goal could make or break Biden’s pledge to slash the country’s planet-warming emissions in half by 2030. And if successful, 100% clean electricity could energize vast sectors of the US economy: electric vehicles, home and office heating and cooling, and appliances. It could even power heavy industry and manufacturing, which is currently reliant on fossil fuels.
“When you have a fully clean grid, versus a grid that either is a quarter or a half clean, that makes a significant difference in terms of the greenhouse gas performance of the things you’re plugging in to that grid,” White House national climate adviser Ali Zaidi told CNN. “That electric vehicle now is twice or three times cleaner when you shift to a fully clean grid.”
Yet while renewable energy has exploded over the past decade, bringing Biden’s cornerstone climate goal to fruition by 2035 could be beyond his grasp.
As of this year, about 44% of America’s electricity was powered by zero-emissions sources like wind, solar, nuclear and hydropower, according to the Department of Energy. The rest comes from fossil fuels like methane gas and coal.
After the Inflation Reduction Act passed last year – legislation that aimed to supercharge clean energy in the US – an analysis from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory predicts the US will get to around 80% clean electricity by 2030, a number that includes renewables, nuclear energy and carbon capture on fossil fuel plants.
By 2035, the federal analysis shows clean and renewable sources will make up about 86% of US energy, spurred in large part by the IRA. (That analysis did not include the…
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