According to the EPA’s draft emissions inventory released last week, the Biden Administration is focusing on the industrial sector in their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to net zero by 2050. The industrial sector produced 23.8% of all carbon emissions in 2020, and the Department of Energy (DOE) is looking to create regional clean hydrogen hubs to help cut emissions from hard-to-decarbonize industries such as ammonia and steel. This initiative, part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, includes an $8 billion hydrogen hub, a $1 billion clean hydrogen electrolysis program and a $500 million clean hydrogen manufacturing and recycling research program, and the DOE issued a request for information last week to gather comments on it.
Additionally, the White House, through its new interdepartmental Buy Clean task force, expects to increase the federal procurement of clean construction materials through recommended pilot projects. This all follows the guidance given by the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to responsibly advance carbon capture, utilization and sequestration (CCUS) technologies.
CCUS initiatives are key to removing carbon dioxide from power plant emissions as well as storing large quantities of that carbon dioxide, integral to achieving net zero GHG emissions goals in the United States. The infrastructure law will fund $12 billion of these CCUS initiatives.