U.S. President Joe Biden has announced a massive infrastructure plan intended to accelerate the transition to clean technology in a sprawling eight-year program that costs $2 trillion.
The plan also touches roads, bridges and broadband access; social policy, like public housing and funding for day care spots; and it raises and rearranges corporate taxes to pay for it.
But at its core, it’s a climate plan.
With the U.S. increasingly unlikely to impose a nationwide carbon tax or cap-and-trade system, Biden’s focus has shifted to spending record sums of public money on next-generation green technology — from 500,000 vehicle charging stations to a zero-carbon power grid to consumer incentives for electric cars and home retrofits.