Biden stops short of declaring climate emergency, takes steps on wind power

By Jeff Mason and Timothy Gardner

SOMERSET, Mass./WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden unveiled new executive steps address climate in a visit to Massachusetts on Wednesday that are expected to fall short of declaring the federal emergency many Democrats had urged.

"Climate change is literally an existential threat to our nation and to the world," Biden said.

He said the threats posed by climate change represent a true emergency, but he stopped short of declaring a federal emergency.

"This is an emergency, an emergency, and I will look at it that way."

Democratic lawmakers and environmental groups have been calling for the White House to take aggressive measures on climate change after conservative Democratic Senator Joe Manchin said last week he was not ready to support key climate provisions in Congress, a critical loss in the evenly divided Senate.

White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy told reporters on Air Force One that new Biden executive actions will include Federal Emergency Management Agency funding to help states build cooling centers to deal with excessive heat and to tackle other impacts of climate change. The $2.3 billion FEMA funding is the largest ever to its Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Program, the White House said.

A White House official said that new funding could expand flood control, shore up utilities, retrofit buildings, and help low-income families pay for heating and cooling costs.

Biden will also announce new support for the domestic offshore wind industry. The administration has identified 700,000 acres for possible offshore wind energy development in the Gulf of Mexico, the White House said.

Biden spoke from a former coal-fired plant that is playing a role in supporting the state's offshore wind industry as a manufacturing hub for undersea cables.

McCarthy said Biden will lay out more executive actions on climate in coming weeks.

Biden has been under pressure to declare a climate emergency, which would enable the use of the Defense Production Act to ramp up production of a wide range of renewable energy products and systems.

Senator Jeff Merkley and eight other Democrats sent a letter to Biden on Wednesday urging him to declare a climate emergency and use aggressive executive actions to limit emissions from fossil fuels produced on public lands and waters and maximize use of electric vehicles.

But the president is not expected to declare a climate emergency on Wednesday even as a heat wave swept across the country and threatened millions of Americans as well as the power grid.

Biden promised tough action on climate change in his presidential campaign and pledged in international climate negotiations to cut climate pollution by 50% by 2030 and reach 100% clean electricity by 2035.

But that climate agenda has been derailed by several major setbacks, including Congress failing to pass crucial climate and clean energy measures in a federal budget bill, record-setting gasoline prices, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine disrupting global energy markets.

A Supreme Court ruling last month limiting the federal government's authority to issue sweeping regulations to reduce carbon emissions from power plants also is undermining Biden's climate plans.

When asked whether Biden has concluded there is no longer any option for a climate bill, a senior White House official told reporters that other people could answer that question, evidently suggesting a lot depends on Manchin. "Our focus is on what we can do," the official said.