Greentech Media outlined President Biden’s executive climate actions, quoting AEE’s Jeff Dennis on what federal purchasing power means for job growth. Read excerpts below and the full story here. 

President Joe Biden signed a sprawling set of executive orders on Wednesday ordering federal agencies to procure carbon-free energy and electric vehicles, spur commercialization of clean energy technologies, accelerate clean energy generation and transmission projects and ensure that disadvantaged communities get a fair share of the ensuing economic and environmental benefits. 

Wednesday’s executive orders are the latest step in the Biden-Harris administration’s aggressive early actions seeking to combat climate change and reverse Trump administration policies seen as harming that goal. Their overarching aim is to “center the climate crisis” in U.S. foreign policy and national security, and to create a “whole-of-government approach” to shifting the country from reliance on fossil fuels to sources of low- or no-carbon energy, according to a White House fact sheet.

Wednesday’s orders provide some early indications of how Biden will seek to use the spending power of the federal government to bolster his pledges to cut electricity-sector carbon emissions to zero by 2035 and achieve a carbon-free U.S. economy by 2050…

Clean-energy groups also lauded Wednesday’s order to federal agencies to “accelerate clean energy and transmission projects under federal siting and permitting processes." This directive aligns with the Biden-Harris administration's pledges to streamline wind and solar projects on federal lands. It could also apply to the complicated task of reforming federal transmission policies that critics say have stymied the development of high-voltage grids needed to integrate the unprecedented growth in renewables that the administration’s decarbonization goals will require. 

“Deploying federal purchasing power to accelerate the electrification of transportation and the development of clean energy will create good-paying jobs and economic growth in every corner of America,” Jeff Dennis, managing director and general counsel at national business group Advanced Energy Economy, said in a statement.

Read the full story here.