By Irina Slav
Former Maryland Congressman John Delaney has become the latest in a growing list of Democratic presidential candidates pledging trillions in climate change fighting initiatives, CNN reports, citing Delaney’s US$4-trillion plan to cut carbon emissions by up to 90 percent by 2050.
The plan focuses on a carbon tax for polluters with the money collected this way to be then distributed among the general population. It also involves incentives for investment in direct carbon capture: a costly technology that Delaney says he will finance by ending federal subsidies for oil and gas companies, and replacing these with US$5 billion in annual investments in carbon capture technologies.
In case anyone is bothered with the size of the total investment needed, the plan claims most of this—US$3 trillion to be exact—will come from the carbon tax. The remaining US$1 trillion looks like it would have to come from the federal coffers but, the plan states, all this expenditure will result in US$3 trillion in federal revenues.
Climate change plans are shaping up as a big part of the run-up to the Democratic primaries. Washington Governor Jay Inslee, for example, earlier this month revealed a plan dubbed the “Evergreen Economy Plan”, which would cost US$9 trillion, of which US$300 billion annually would come from the federal government and US$600 billion annually will come from the public sector.
Another recent example in the greenest-of-the-green race was Michael Bennet’s “America’s Climate Change Plan”. This is the most expensive plan to date, with a price tag of US$10 trillion. It calls for “100 percent clean, net-zero emissions as soon as possible, and no later than 2050.”
The plan also includes a specific “Climate X Option” whereby power providers would be required to offer zero-emission options to every household and business in America. More ambiguously, the plan calls on American agriculture to “lead the global fight against climate change”.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com