The progress on climate technology in the United States is unlikely to be threatened even if a new, less climate-focused president, were to win U.S. elections next year, investors and developers told the Reuters IMPACT conference on Thursday.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s democratic administration last year signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which delivers a support package for clean technology worth $370 billion.
Celine Herweijer, chief sustainability officer at HSBC, said current momentum around climate technology is unlikely to be dampened by any administration change.
“You are seeing super powers grappling to be at the centre of future clean energy supply chains and that’s going to stay,” she said at the conference in London.
The U.S. faces an election next year and none of the challenging republican candidates, such as Donald Trump, have made climate change an important issue in their campaigns to win the Republican nomination.
Rhea Hamilton, a managing director at General Atlantic’s BeyondNetZero team, said there were policies supporting some climate technology, such as carbon capture and storage, even before the current administration.
“I see there is such significant momentum in the market coming from the private side that is going to drive this regardless of what happens on the regulatory side,” she said.
Christoph Gebald, co CEO and co founder of Climeworks, which is part of a consortium that recently won IRA funding, said its direct air capture technology enjoys bipartisan support.
“It caters to several needs, it’s an obvious climate solution, it creates jobs and it creates economic value so direct air capture will continue its journey,” he said.
Direct air capture removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stores it, usually in underground caverns.
Source : Reuters
