The White House will give Podesta a team within the Executive Office of the President under the newly created White House Office on Clean Energy Innovation and Implementation. The order emphasized the new office, working in tandem with the climate policy office, would help speed clean energy deployment, reduce the cost of energy efficient appliances, boost U.S. domestic manufacturing that would create more jobs, put electric vehicles on the road and lower energy costs.
Scientists and activists have warned that the White House must not squander the law’s opportunities because nations are far off from meeting global climate targets to keep temperatures in check, and U.S. progress — given its status as the world’s largest economy and historical contributor to climate change — is crucial.
But even successfully executing the Inflation Reduction Act is not enough to meet Biden’s climate target, with independent models suggesting it will slash planet-heating gases 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 — 10 percentage points shy of Biden’s mark.
The White House tasked Zaidi, who will report directly to Biden as Gina McCarthy’s successor, with making up a bulk of that difference. His portfolio will include finding more emissions cuts through new regulations and actions across federal agencies that the administration largely held at bay to avoid disrupting delicate talks on Capitol Hill.
Separately, the executive order also makes Podesta the chair of the National Climate Task Force, with Zaidi serving as vice chair. That task force includes agency chiefs and top White House personnel. Podesta will also co-chair a White House working group to expand clean energy and economic development in coal communities and serve on an interagency council designed to address neighborhoods facing disproportionate amounts of pollution.
The executive order underscored that Podesta’s office will be charged with steering benefits from the law to areas long facing higher pollution levels. The Biden administration has pledged that 40 percent of the benefits of federal climate spending will go to environmental justice communities, but advocates have criticized the administration’s handling of the Inflation Reduction Act. They contend an agreement Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made with Sen. Joe Manchin to hold a vote to ease permitting of infrastructure and energy projects in exchange for the West Virginia Democrat’s support for the Inflation Reduction Act would harm their communities.
Gina McCarthy, Biden’s outgoing national climate adviser, said at an Aspen Institute event on Friday that the administration “has been hearing loudly” from the environmental justice advocates since signing the law while she championed investments it will make aimed at helping those communities, such as funding for green banks and grants for community climate programs.
“As they know better than anybody that can shift in a moment’s time, so they’re going to and rightly so demand to hold our feet to the fire,” McCarthy said.
The executive order also touted the law’s potential for bolstering energy security, a conversation that’s come to the fore after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine contributed to surging energy prices and inflation. While gas and consumer prices appear to be settling, they still remain high heading into the midterm elections, where Democratic control of both houses of Congress is in jeopardy.
