President Joe Biden has proposed a $2 trillion investment over the next decade in modernising the national grid, ramping up electric vehicle (EV) supply chains and new research programmes for emerging clean energy technologies.

The proposed American Jobs Plan is a wide-ranging policy package aiming to invest $2 trillion into critical US infrastructure over the next decade. The plan seeks to overhaul the national electricity grid, retrofit homes and public buildings with energy-efficiency upgrades, place the US in the leading position on the EV market and invest heavily in developing technologies such as hydrogen and carbon capture.

A total of $100 billion has been proposed for grid investments to support the administration’s efforts to decarbonise the US power system by 2035, including the development of at least 20 GW of high-voltage capacity power lines.

Emerging technologies such as carbon capture and storage as well as utility-scale energy storage, advanced nuclear, rare earth element separations, floating offshore wind and biofuels, would be backed by $35 billion in research and development funding to develop “the full range of solutions needed to achieve technology breakthroughs that address the climate crisis”.

Various efficiency upgrades for households and public buildings have also been identified, to be supported by a $27 billion Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator that will focus on distributed energy resources, retrofits of residential, commercial and municipal buildings, and clean transportation.

While the scope of the American Jobs Plan is broader than just the energy sector, emissions mitigation is a recurring theme, along with the creation of a new workforce that is expected to build and refit the national energy stock.

Source: NS Energy