United States

After months of political wrangling in Washington, US President Joe Biden will arrive in Glasgow for the COP26 climate summit with a considerably slimmer set of domestic climate policies than progressives had hoped. A compromise spending package announced by the White House Thursday contains $555 billion in spending and incentives for climate-related programs, including electric vehicles and electrification incentives. Gone, however, are potentially transformative proposals that would have levied taxes and tariffs on carbon and methane and those that would have required utilities to accelerate their deployment of renewables. The package includes clean energy tax credits worth $320 billion, including 10-year expanded tax credits for utility-scale and residential clean energy, transmission and storage, clean passenger and commercial vehicles, and clean energy manufacturing. There are also $110 billion of investments and incentives to spur new domestic supply chains and technologies, like solar, batteries and advanced materials, while boosting the competitiveness of existing industries, like steel, cement, and aluminum. A $20 billion program will also provide incentives for the government to be a purchaser of next gen technologies, including long-duration storage, small modular reactors and clean construction materials.