Biden Maps Climate Path Around Manchin With Aid on Wind, Cooling

(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden will unveil new policies to fight climate change, including opening additional offshore areas to wind farms, after Senator Joe Manchin’s objections halted legislation to curb rising temperatures.

Biden will outline the plans Wednesday at a former coal-fired power plant in Massachusetts that’s being re-purposed to support wind power generation. Provisions include moving to expand wind power generation and the availability of efficient home cooling systems, as well as allocating emergency funding for infrastructure and projects like cooling stations in places facing extreme heat. 

But with an eye toward retaining Manchin’s support for some measures, Biden will hold back on other steps under consideration, including declaring a formal climate emergency -- a move that would unlock broad new powers to develop clean power while restricting the extraction and export of fossil fuels. 

“The president is going to announce some new investments to allow states to be more prepared and resilient in the face of the heat, and to frankly save lives,” White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy said aboard Air Force One on Wednesday as Biden flew to the event. 

“One of the actions the president’s going to talk about is the simple recognition that climate change is an emergency,” McCarthy said. “And he’s going to indicate that over the next few weeks, the White House and he are going to come out with executive actions that actually put some definitions, some plans around that -- because we’re not ready to give up on our strong goals.”

The president is under pressure to meet his campaign promises of aggressive action against climate change without also alienating Manchin, a moderate Democrat whose vote is critical in the evenly divided Senate. The West Virginia lawmaker represents a state rich in coal and natural gas and has drawn much of his own wealth from the coal industry.

The administration hopes to retain Manchin’s support for an important health-care bill that would lower costs for both prescription drugs and Obamacare insurance plans before midterm elections in November. McCarthy downplayed Manchin’s impact on the rollout. 

“I do not know what Congress is anticipating now, or any one senator, but the idea that the president is initiating here is to acknowledge the challenge,” she said.

Biden’s climate moves include steps to nurture offshore wind development in new areas along the US Coast -- both alongside oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and in waters off Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.

McCarthy said he will also broaden the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, designed to help low-income families pay their winter heating bills, to also cover installation of home cooling systems. That includes roughly $380 million in funding, McCarthy said. 

Biden will also announce more than $2 billion in Federal Emergency Management Agency funding for communities dealing with extreme heat, McCarthy said. 

Biden has laid out a goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030, with auctions of territory near California expected later this year, and, ultimately, lease sales on almost every US coast. 

Administration officials continue to study an emergency declaration, and McCarthy said more announcements would be made in the coming weeks. 

Biden is grappling with how to squeeze more legislative accomplishments out of a narrowly divided Congress. In the Senate, Manchin and every other Democrat effectively possess veto power over any bill Democratic leaders try to advance using the fast-track budget reconciliation process, which averts a Republican filibuster by requiring only a simple majority for passage. 

Democrats haven’t completely abandoned hope of a reconciliation package that includes climate and tax measures. Manchin suggested he might be open to considering them in September, after further reports on US inflation and the Federal Reserve’s response.

The senator has said his reticence to move forward on major Democratic priorities is based on deep concern about inflation, though supporters of the climate and spending measure he blocked argue it would cut the federal deficit and stands a better chance of slowing price increases than accelerating them.

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