A Historic Climate Announcement
On Monday, the Biden administration made a series of announcements declaring an electricity supply emergency and invoking the Defense Production Act (DPA) of 1950 to increase domestic production in clean energy sectors that will be crucial for decarbonization, including solar panels, electric heat pumps, insulation, and more.
These actions, says Roosevelt Director of Industrial Policy and Trade Todd N. Tucker, represent “a historic acknowledgement of the climate crisis by the federal government, and a fundamental pivot by the United States toward a clean energy transition that creates good jobs here at home.”
Though powers similar to those authorized by the DPA have existed since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration, they have not been used in such a robust manner since the Korean War, and never for robust climate action.
“While the climate crisis is undoubtedly a crisis, it is slower-moving and different in kind than the types of crises the DPA has been used for in the past,” Tucker explains.
“The legal and political precedent alone of using the DPA to address the climate crisis is therefore hard to understate.”
Read more from Tucker in “Making Sense of Biden’s Green Energy Defense Production Act Announcements,” and about how DPA powers can be used to combat the climate crisis in “Priorities and Allocations: How the Defense Production Act Allows Government to Mobilize Industry to Ensure Popular Well-Being.”
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