Joe Biden: “The U.S. will meet its emissions targets by 2030”

The US president has apologized for the country leaving the Paris Agreement during the presidency of his predecessor Donald Trump.

US President Joe Biden arrived in the Egyptian city of Sharm el Sheikh on Friday to participate in the COP27 Climate Summit. His speech was one of the most anticipated, especially because of the persistence of the legacy of his predecessor, Donald Trump, on climate matters. However, his pronouncement has caused great controversy.

Biden arrived with a package of new initiatives under his arm and a definitive commitment: “The US will meet its emissions targets by 2030.” “We have to avoid climate catastrophe, we have to take advantage of a new clean energy economy, not only as something imperative of the present and future, but also so that it is recorded in history,” he added.

He has proposed strengthening global climate resilience, including doubling the U.S. commitment to the Adaptation Fund to $100 million, and announcing more than $150 million in new aid to accelerate the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience (Prepare) efforts in Africa and an additional $20 million to help islands threatened by the rising level of climate change. sea. In addition, a collaboration program with Egypt will be launched to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy in the Arab country.

He added that his country will strengthen national regulations on methane emissions originating in the oil and gas industry. “We will be the first government to require suppliers to set emission reduction targets in line with the Paris Agreement, leveraging the federal government’s annual purchasing power of more than $630 billion,” he said.

U.S. MEASURES

The new announcements of the US president come at the end of the first week of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP27), where the US climate ambassador, John Kerry, had already announced a plan to transfer to large companies the responsibilities of financing the countries’ energy transition plans. It is a “critical tool” with which companies will be able to “offset” their greenhouse gas emissions, and in parallel, countries will have an “extra injection of money” that will allow them to finance their energy transition projects.

However, many activists have been skeptical of this new mechanism. In fact, Navroz Dubash, one of the coordinators of the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), considers that “it is a bad agreement for developing countries. Instead of having public funds to use strategically, this initiative offers unpredictable financing that varies by market.”

Source: MundoDiario