Via Teleconference
2:03 P.M. EST
MR. FERNÁNDEZ HERNÁNDEZ: Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining today’s embargoed press call. This press call will begin with on-the-record remarks from White House National Climate Adviser Ali Zaidi and Senior Adviser to the President for International Climate Policy John Podesta. After the remarks, there will be a question-and-answer period, which will be on background and attributable to “senior administration officials.” The contents of this call and the related materials you all should have already received over email are embargoed until tomorrow, Thursday, December 19th, at 5:00 a.m. Eastern. With that, I will turn it over to Ali.
MR. ZAIDI: Thanks so much. And thanks, everybody, for joining us.
Under the Paris Agreement, countries are called on to develop nationally determined contributions — NDCs — that collectively advance global progress on climate change.
In April 2021, the United States communicate — communicated its most recent nationally determined contribution.
When we did, we were cognizant of the baseline, a business-as-usual trajectory that projected 15 to 20 percent emissions reductions 2030 relative to 2005 levels.
Under President Biden’s leadership, against that backdrop, we set an ambitious path — a new target for the United States that sought to reduce emissions by 50 to 52 percent in 2030.
In the time since, the United States has deployed a paradigm-shifting strategy that has both accelerated decarbonization and also expanded economic opportunity and economic growth.
We found a way to take on a global problem that was decades in the making, with an approach that makes a visible difference in communities right now — a chance to deliver cleaner air, lower costs, better jobs, and a real sense of pride and purpose.
The U.S. strategy is manifest in the investments from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act and in a complementary architecture of federal standards that spur demand and generate the regulatory certainty needed to accelerate capital formation and encourage entrepreneurial risk-taking.
It is an important combination that has changed the equation: Climate action is no longer about gloom and doom but about hope and possibilities.
Catalyzed by these incentives, fiscal and regulatory, our partners have come together to swing for the fences in every sector of the economy. Looking for wins everywhere — power and transportation, buildings and industry, lands and agriculture — gives us a better shot at sticking the landing and at delivering for everyone.
The coming together is key. The robustness of the U.S. strategy comes from an approach that has mobilized public and private, at every level of government and every layer of the capital stack, in a tech-agnostic race to net zero as our North Star.
You can see this, as I have, not just in communities across America but as business leaders, mayors, governors, Tribal leaders, have joined every single United Nations Conference of the Parties since the president took office. In Glasgow, in Sharm, in Dubai, and in Baku, these leaders showcased the efforts of the United States of America, of all our capacities and capabilities working together.
Today, together, we set a new ambitious target for America — the United States communicating a new nationally determined contribution under the leadership of President Joe Biden.
The United States — all of us working together — will reduce our emissions by 61 to 66 percent by 2035, relative to 2005 levels — all greenhouse gases covered, every sector of the economy reached.
This entire range is on a linear or steeper-than-linear trajectory to net zero by 2050, meaning that America will do its part to keep 1.5 degrees alive.
Today, the U.S. is adding more capacity to its grid than it has in decades. Ninety-six percent of that electricity will be clean. Helped by clearer rules and faster permitting, pioneering offshore wind farms are delivering clean power, retired nuclear plants are coming back online, America is racing forward on solar and batteries — not just the deployment but also the means to stamp those products “made in America.”
Today, the U.S. is mining everything from nickel to the lithium, upgrading it, making the anodes and cathodes and the separators for batteries manufactured by union workers in factories that had once shut down.
From laggard to leader, the U.S. is in the race again on electric transportation — a way to get from point A to point B without putting pollution in the sky or putting our kids and their health at risk.
Today, the U.S. has over 80,000 farmers and ranchers, over 75 million acres, advancing climate-smart agriculture practices; millions of families benefitting from energy efficiency upgrades; and countless new factories on the fore of clean materials, like clean steel and cement, in areas once seen as too hard to decarbonize.
In fact, across the country, we see decarbonization efforts to reduce our emissions in many ways achieving escape l- — velocity — an inexorable path, a place from which we will not turn back.
These proof points show what is possible when we set an ambitious target — informed through rigorous engagement with the techno-economic data — with federal agencies and scientific experts from across civil society, when we take stock of all that is possible when all of us work together.
These proof points also show the massive prize — more good jobs, better public health, increased energy security, bolstered economic competitiveness — if and when we meet this new 2035 climate target.
We are excited about the ambition laid down by the president in this new NDC, and we are confident that, working together, the United States can achieve this goal. And this progress that we continue to see here across the country is positioning America to lead and continue to push the ambition all around the world.
And with that, appropriately, let me hand it over to my partner and to the senior adviser for international climate policy here at the White House, John Podesta.
MR. PODESTA: Thanks, Ali, and thanks to everyone for joining today’s call.
President Biden’s new 2035 climate goal is both a reflection of what we’ve already accomplished, as you’ve heard from my colleague, and what we believe the United States can and should achieve in the future.
Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we’re on a path to achieve the goal President Biden set in 2021: to cut our emissions in half by 2030.
We’re working to slash pollution from every sector — power, buildings, transportation, industry, agriculture, and forestry — and we’ve ignited a clean energy boom across the country: north, south, east, and west.
Since President Biden and Vice President Harris took office, the private sector has announced over $450 billion in new clean energy investments. Those projects are getting built as we speak. They’ll keep creating good-paying jobs, and they’ll continue to reduce emissions.
Because we’ve implemented a government-enabled but private sector-led strategy, our investments under this administration are durable and will continue to pay dividends for our economy and our climate for years to come, allowing us to set an ambitious and achievable 2035 target.
And in this NDC, we’re being explicit about a methane reduction of at least 35 percent in 2035, showing that the U.S. is maximizing our ability to tackle the climate crisis by targeting all greenhouse gases, including the super pollutants.
The Biden-Harris administration may be about to leave office, but we’re confident in America’s ability to rally around this new climate goal, because while the United States federal government under President Trump may put climate action on the back burner, the work to contain climate change is going to continue in the United States with commitment and passion and belief. That’s not wishful thinking; it’s happened before.
In the wake of COP22 in Marrakesh and President Trump’s decision in 2017 to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, the “We Are Still In” movement was born in the United States. It’s now grown into the most expansive coalition ever assembled in support of U.S. climate action, with more than 5,000 businesses, local governments, Tribal nations, universities, and more, covering all 50 states.
That coalition, now called “America Is All In,” represents nearly two thirds of Americans, three quarters of U.S. GDP, and half of U.S. emissions. Governor Inslee of Washington and other subnational leaders came to COP29 in Baku last month to share the same message with the world.
We’re looking to governors, mayors, business leaders, and more to carry this important work forward, because the rest of the world will now be looking to them to show how many Americans still care about the future of our planet and our communities.
The truth is, U.S. climate leadership has motivated the world to move faster.
After President Biden set an ambitious 2030 climate target in 2021, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, Mexico, and others delivered stronger, more ambitious targets.
Once we passed the IRA, other countries — like Japan, Australia, the EU, and the UK — adopted our government-enabled, private sector-led strategy to investment in clean energy.
I’ve spent a significant amount of time this year engaging in productive dialogue with my Chinese counterpart, Liu Zhenmin, and other leaders of the PRC government to encourage the — and I would note, the Pe- — the People’s Republic of China is now by far the world’s largest emitter — but I’ve encouraged them to submit a 2035 NDC target that is aligned with a 1.5-degree world that is economy wide and covering all ...
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