Joe Biden’s national climate adviser sees AI as a ‘massive opportunity’

Of course, President-elect Donald Trump will probably try undermine efforts to combat climate change as soon as he takes office. There’s more not enough renewable energy to meet U.S. climate goals, or even to meet the skyrocketing demand for electricity from AI. AND time is running out to waste climate funds from the Inflation Reduction Act before the Trump administration can try to bring them back. Despite all this, Joe Biden’s top climate change adviser Ali Zaidi isn’t concerned.

He has managed to maintain the perhaps mawkish optimism that has become the hallmark of the Biden-Harris camp, even when that enthusiasm does not necessarily reflect the mood on the ground. Edge This week, he spoke with White House National Climate Adviser Zaidi about what he sees for the future in clean energy technologies and where there may still be room for progress.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You have a legal education. How did climate change become your cause?

I came to the United States at the age of six, and for me, for my family, the story of America is the story of economic mobility. I really came to Washington wanting to work to raise the rungs of the ladder to the American dream, and it turns out that the biggest economic opportunity right now is addressing this crisis that is affecting the most vulnerable Americans and the most vulnerable people around the world. .

I didn’t come to this job from the side of the movement hugging the tree. I came into this with a real, deep conviction that this was my way of recapturing the engine of economic opportunity that this country has been for so many who strive to achieve the American dream.

President-elect Donald Trump says he will do it withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement And “drill, baby, drill” How concerned are you that the Trump administration is rolling back the progress the U.S. has made on clean energy?

You know, I think US progress will continue in a pretty steady way. This project is not just a project about climate and emissions reduction. This is a project to strengthen our energy security and economic revitalization in places that have been left behind and left behind.

The incentive to complete the work is stronger because the incentive is shared and that’s how we specifically structured it. The other thing that I think is really powerful is that we’ve really started the technology race to zero emissions as a North Star.

When we talk about decarbonizing the electricity grid, making it more modern and resilient, sometimes the conversation is caricatured as a conversation about solar and wind. But look what’s happening in the United States, you have megaproject currently under construction in Utah. It’s a two-gigawatt project, the size of the Hoover Dam in terms of electricity, that will produce energy from the hot rocks beneath our feet – geothermal energy. You have wind that doesn’t just work on the plains as it has for decades, but now brings power from the sea.

Do you have nuclear renaissance happening in the USA first new nuclear reactor in decades. I was there in Georgia when it appeared online. Retired plants such as Palisades plant in western Michigan. I went to the Palisades plant after retiring, the workers retired to get power back on the grid, and next generation of reactors.

We, as the federal government, must be a partner in helping catalyze all of this progress, whatever form it takes. And you see this repeated in other sectors. When it comes to the transport sector, it doesn’t matter to us whether it is strong: hybrid, all-electric, hydrogen, sustainable aviation or biofuels. We care about two things: bending the emissions curve and expanding economic opportunity.

The culture war over clean energy often revolves around the idea of ​​individual choice: I should be able to drive a gas car if I want, or cook on a gas stove instead of electricity. What do you think about this?

We need to meet people where they are as we tackle the climate crisis, period, period. One of the things the world has learned so clearly about decarbonization is that there is no social license for decarbonization pathways that put upward pressure on consumer prices. So part of decarbonization must be about making people’s lives better, providing a better product and winning them over.

We saw this with LEDs. I was at the beginning of the Obama administration when the United States first started making LED light bulbs. They used to cost a lot of money, but there was a technology cost curve. And because we invested in it, the US was able to help make it cheaper and more accessible, and it turned out to be a better product. And now this technology is widespread throughout the country. I think that’s how we win the future, by giving people a better product that, by the way, doesn’t throw a ton of pollution into the sky.

Countries that have signed the Paris Agreement are due to update their national climate plans this year, and the Biden administration last month unveiled a more ambitious plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than 60 percent by 2035. How else can the US achieve this? target?

I think we can go further and reach the next goal in 2035 by continuing to invest in America, and this is what that looks like. farm bill will be before Congress. It’s late, but it will be before the next Congress. They have the ability to act depending on whether they invest in improving overall factor productivity in the agricultural sector. It turns out that precision agriculture is also climate-smart agriculture. So will Congress, through the farm bill, invest more in climate-smart agriculture, in precision agriculture technologies, things that will strengthen the economics of our family farmers and increase the competitiveness of the sector?

At the state level, we are seeing massive mobilization to further accelerate decarbonization in the energy grid and transportation sector. There is also incredible industrial capacity. When we took office, you made almost no batteries in the US. Tesla, maybe a few more, but battery capacity is very limited. By 2030, factories already operating or under construction will have the capacity to produce batteries for 10 million vehicles in the United States. We sell an average of 15 million cars a year. I think you’ll really see private equity continue to build momentum on this transformation.

So, another reason why we think we’ll continue to gain momentum is that private equity sees the win and will actually continue to make that bet in sectors like energy and transportation. Clean energy is literally cheaper than dirtier energy. That’s where the smart money goes. For example, we expect that in 2024, 96 percent of what will be built will be clean energy.

I think what we as a country (and that means at the state and local level) will need to do more is help families reduce their utility bills at home. There is a huge opportunity in our built environment to reduce energy waste and give consumers control over their energy bills. And if we do that, it will obviously be great economics at the retail level. It would also be a big win for the climate.

When it comes to lowering Americans’ utility bills and taking action on climate change, one of the concerns I often hear is: AI and data center energy needs. What do you think about this?

I joined meetings with technology company executives. I also met with leaders from the electricity sector. There is consensus in industry and the U.S. government that we will and must seize the opportunity to lead in the development of artificial intelligence technologies. And that means we must remove barriers to the introduction of clean energy into the grid, which is needed to facilitate the construction of data centers.

I have full confidence not only in the federal government, tech entrepreneurs and their companies, but also in state and local governments that they see the economic opportunity, they see the safety imperative, and they also understand it by using clean energy in almost every country. cases will be the cheapest, fastest and safest way to supply power to these new data centers.

So I don’t see these goals intersecting with each other. In fact, I see AI as a catalyst for our electricity ambitions. AI as an accelerator for grid modernization. This is a huge opportunity. But I’m also a person who often sees opportunity in headwinds. So maybe it’s my bias.

We have to talk about Inflation Reduction Act is the largest climate legislation to date, creating $369 billion for the fight against climate change and clean energy. But Trump says he will do it cancel any unspent funds. How much is left to give out??

Very little. I remember this was a Google Doc on my computer back in the summer of 2020 and a Zoom call with a candidate at the time. One of the important things we did when we crafted the Inflation Reduction Act was to make sure that it was structured to cover all parts of the economy. That it was structured in such a way that the IRA or the government intervened, like a booster rocket to a rocket. The rocket was private sector. And I think what you’ll find now in the Inflation Reduction Act is that the rocket has reached escape velocity in many areas of the economy. You have 100 gigawatts of energy that were launched with these tax credits, but now it’s up in the air. It’s flying. You can’t put it back in the bottle.

In terms of unspent funds, we are at $9 out of every $10 in grant funding and other similar dollars that have already entered the economic bloodstream across the country.

The question then becomes: Do you want to go out and turn off the economic opportunity that is now responsible for thousands of factory and construction jobs across the country? And I think this is both a difficult economic challenge and a very difficult political challenge. That’s why even in Congress you’ve heard that maybe they’re interested in a scalpel approach, if I quote the new speaker. It’s still quite a challenge. I think of it this way: Jenga blocks. When you pull blocks out of a Jenga tower, you don’t know which one will threaten the structural integrity of the entire building.

We are experiencing a period of economic recovery and revitalization, an industrial renaissance. America is at the forefront of energy security and energy technology, finally competing to win global competition and creating jobs and opportunity locally. I don’t know if I’d like to do the work of retrieving blocks from a Jenga tower, but we’ll leave that up to the team that’s coming in a few weeks.