Biden Orders Federal Vehicles and Buildings to Use Renewable Energy by 2050

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Biden unveiled a plan on Wednesday to make the federal government carbon neutral, ordering federal agencies to buy electric vehicles, to power facilities with wind, solar and nuclear energy, and to use sustainable building materials.

In a series of executive orders, Mr. Biden called on the government to transform its 300,000 buildings, 600,000 cars and trucks, and use its annual purchases of $650 billion in goods and services to meet his goal of a federal government that stops adding carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by 2050. From his earliest days in office, Mr. Biden said he intended to use the federal government as a model and to help spur the markets for green energy. The executive orders signed Wednesday set a timetable for the transition.

By 2030, Mr. Biden wants the federal government to purchase electricity produced only from sources that do not emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that are warming the planet. And by 2032, the Biden administration wants to see the emissions produced by buildings cut in half.

The executive action was first reported by The Washington Post. If implemented, the moves could give a significant boost to the clean energy market, experts said. “It’s a similar strategy to what China is doing so successfully, leveraging the purchasing power of their government to create demand that markets can meet,” said Joshua Freed, senior vice president for climate and energy at Third Way, a centrist Democratic research group.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/08/climate/biden-government-carbon-neutral.html

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Link to the E.O. is here - https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/12/08/executive-order-on-catalyzing-clean-energy-industries-and-jobs-through-federal-sustainability/

[dutch777]

1. Great idea but why does it take almost 30 years?

I understand in some parts of the country alternative power or fuel sources may be of limited availability and that buildings and other major capital systems would take longer but vehicles (non-military) should be 10 years max. We aren't being aggressive enough in this.

[BumRushDaShow]

2. I used to work for the federal government

and I know the fleet (at least at my worksite) had some cars that used E85 (flex-fuel) cars so if we used those GOVs, and needed to gas up, we would need to find a station that sold that mix, and stations with E85 were few and far between here in Philly (luckily there was one a few miles from my building).

So for just that portion (federal vehicles, which can include cars, vans, trucks, aircraft, boats/ships, etc), then yes it's going to take some time - not so much in purchasing the vehicles themselves, but to get the charging infrastructure in place to do this. I know that we had some of our cars/vans parked in the back of the building but the rest were kept in 2 nearby parking garages. So it would be a matter of getting contracts (and funding for them) to install charging stations at federal buildings and find some way to get similar available at private garages (and obviously implemented at gas stations nationwide).

The E.O. also talks about converting federal facilities and I know that with ARRA back in 2009, the building where I worked went through getting it more energy-efficient, which included replacement of all the old wooden sash windows with energy-efficient vinyl ones (and since the building was designated historic, the exterior had to be done a certain way so as not to alter the historic nature). Plus a green roof was installed. That whole process involved completely encasing the building with scaffolding (with guys outside my window singing on the scaffold platforms).

And in some cases, the federal government actually owns the facility but in other cases, they lease space in private buildings, so decisions need to be made of how to go about carrying this out for existing GSA-owned buildings (with various ages) or whether to actually "move" to a more sustainable building (which again has a cost) for agencies in private buildings.

So yes, it will take years to do.

[Slammer]

9. Slow

Yeah, the main problem with such a slow pace of change is that the next administration can just reverse the policy before much of it gets implemented.

If you want lasting change, it needs to be enacted and implemented during a single administration's eight years in office.

[Magoo48]

10. In the timeframe relayed to us by the world's best science,

10, 20, and 30 years mean nothing. It’s an insult to the few working, and dying, on behalf of climate Justice and the Climate Catastrophe.

Whenever one hears long term “greening” projections from the corporate or political world, it’s greenwash, horseshit, and gunsmoke.

The numbers our planet is really dealing with are now considerably less than 10 years to prevent untenable catastrophe. Much damage is already irreversible and will require massive adaptation.

The science is available—look it up.

[orleans]

3. too far down the road imo nt

[BumRushDaShow]

5. I expect many federal buildings have 10-year contracts

for various things including phone/network service, maintenance, utilities, etc., that might cause issues if they had to do major modifications to those contracts. So all of that has to be worked out - and if anything - Congress will have to allocate funds to do it, which would easily cause this to extend out for that 30 years, as old leases/contracts expire and new ones are put into place, plus have a scheduled phase-in of new vehicles.

Just the contracting process alone can take a year for the large ones, including getting the RFPs written up and posted and getting the bids in and reviewed, etc.

It's not going to be one of those things where nothing is done for years and then some switch is flipped in 30 years. The government will phase in things every year (that they are funded to do so) to make it more energy efficient.

[marie999]

4. If the 300,000 government buildings are to use electricity only from sources that do not emit

carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by 2030 then they are going to have to have their own electricity sources or move a lot of their staff to other locations. Federal buildings are all over the country. Is he also including post offices?

[BumRushDaShow]

6. There's one part in the E.O. from the linke WH site that says this

(b) “Agency” means an executive agency as defined in section 105 of title 5, United States Code, excluding the Government Accountability Office and independent regulatory agencies, as defined in 44 U.S.C. 3502(5);

and that later 44USC reference indicates this - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/44/3502

(5) the term “independent regulatory agency” means the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Federal Maritime Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Mine Enforcement Safety and Health Review Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, the Postal Regulatory Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, the Office of Financial Research, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and any other similar agency designated by statute as a Federal independent regulatory agency or commission;

I think the Post Office is an odd entity that may be exempt from much of this although they have their own laws that govern contracting for things noted in the E.O. - https://about.usps.com/manuals/spp/html/spp7_035.htm

[pecosbob]

7. Cool...of course I'll be dead then and most of the world will be underwater.

[IronLionZion]

8. He needs to order federal elevators to be repaired too

damn, I went in to a federal office on Monday and got a good workout climbing up and down stairs