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Biden announces executive actions to turn climate crisis into opportunity
US President Joe Biden is announcing his latest set of executive actions to turn the climate crisis into an opportunity, by creating good-paying jobs in clean energy and lowering costs for families, according to the White House.
“His actions will protect communities from climate impacts already here, including extreme heat conditions impacting more than 100 million Americans this week, and expand offshore wind opportunities and jobs in the United States,” the White House said.
The President will make the announcements at a former coal-fired power plant in Brayton Point, Massachusetts that will host a cable manufacturing facility to support the flourishing offshore wind industry – representing how the President’s leadership is accelerating the nation’s transition away from the pollution, environmental injustice, and volatile price swings of the past toward the good-paying jobs and energy security of the future.
Biden’s new executive actions focus on protecting communities from extreme heat and dangerous climate impacts.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is announcing $2.3 billion in funding for its Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program for Fiscal Year 2022— the largest BRIC investment in history, boosted by the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
This funding will help communities increase resilience to heat waves, drought, wildfires, flood, hurricanes, and other hazards by preparing before disaster strikes. BRIC is among hundreds of federal programs that the Biden-Harris Administration is transforming to support the Justice40 Initiative and prioritize delivering benefits to disadvantaged communities.
The actions also include lowering cooling costs for communities suffering from extreme heat. The Department of Health and Human Services is issuing guidance that for the first time expands how the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) can promote the delivery of efficient air conditioning equipment, community cooling centers, and more.
In April, the Biden-Harris Administration released $385 million through LIHEAP to help families with their household energy costs, including summer cooling—part of a record $8 billion that the Administration has provided, boosted by the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
The actions also comprise expanding offshore wind opportunities and jobs. The Department of the Interior is proposing the first Wind Energy Areas in the Gulf of Mexico, a historic step toward expanding offshore wind opportunities to another region of the United States.
These areas cover 700,000 acres and have the potential to power over three million homes. President Biden is also directing the Secretary of the Interior to advance wind energy development in the waters off the mid- and southern Atlantic Coast and Florida’s Gulf Coast —alleviating uncertainty cast by the prior Administration.
These actions follow the President’s launch of a new Federal-State Offshore Wind Implementation Partnership that brought together Governors to deliver more clean, affordable energy and new jobs.
Millions of Americans feel the effects of climate change each year when their roads wash out, power goes down, homes are destroyed by wildfires, or schools get flooded. Last year alone, the United States faced 20 extreme weather and climate related disaster events with losses exceeding $1 billion each – a cumulative price tag of more than $145 billion.
People of color and underserved communities are disproportionately vulnerable to the climate crisis and are more likely to experience the negative health and environmental effects of climate-related and extreme weather events. Further, the country’s critical infrastructure is at risk from climate and extreme weather.
President Biden will not back down from addressing this emergency. Since taking office, he has mobilized his entire Administration to tackle the climate crisis and secured historic clean energy and climate resilience investments in his Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
He will continue taking bold action to secure a safe, healthy, clean energy future—all while saving families money, delivering clean air and water, advancing environmental justice, and boosting American manufacturing and competitiveness.
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