The coolest parts of Biden's expansive infrastructure plan
Hey, everybody! President Joe Biden has unveiled his first infrastructure proposal and … hot damn.
The eight-year "American Jobs Plan" would spend $2.25 trillion on a huge range of initiatives, from highways to the energy grid, water systems, airports, transit systems, broadband, energy R&D, and — paging a Sen. Joe Manchin — abandoned coal mine clean-up.
This is an amazing document. Yes, there’s stuff in it that I would take out (some highway spending) and stuff I would add (more transit spending). Yes, a serious transition to sustainability would probably take closer to $10 trillion. Yes, there’s a very good chance the plan gets cut or compromised on the way to passage, if it passes at all, which is far from certain.
Still. As presented by the Biden team, it represents not only an enormous total investment, but some really smart investments, in areas where the positive knock-on effects for the clean energy transition could be enormous. There were some true-blue energy wonks involved in writing this thing.
I’ll just quickly go over the parts that are most exciting to me and then mention a couple of benefits that are getting underplayed.
Transportation
The plan would put $174 billion toward a plan to “win the EV market,” which is on the verge of enormous growth. Biden wants to create a domestic supply chain for batteries and EVs (something that is virtually nonexistent today) and domestic manufacturing capacity to make the EVs, all of which will create domestic jobs.
It would offer point-of-sale rebates to purchasers of domestic-made EVs, “while ensuring that these vehicles are affordable for all families and manufactured by workers with good jobs.”
It would offer grants and incentives to state and local governments and private businesses to install EV charging stations, with the goal of 500,000 up and running by 2030.
And I love this, though I wish it were much bigger: “Replace 50,000 diesel transit vehicles and electrify at least 20 percent of our yellow school bus fleet through a new Clean Buses for Kids Program at the Environmental Protection Agency, with support from the Department of Energy.” This will put us on “a path to 100 percent clean buses.”
I have sung the praises of electric city buses; see Vox’s Kelsey Piper on electric school buses. Not only do they save money over time, but they generate immediate air quality benefits for some of the most vulnerable populations — kids and low-income and POC communities, who bear the brunt of diesel pollution. The benefits wildly outweigh the costs. (On the campaign trail, Bernie Sanders proposed $407 billion just for electric buses, which is more like it.)
Finally, oh, by the way: the plan “will utilize the vast tools of federal procurement to electrify the federal fleet, including the United States Postal Service.” Whaaat?
As Sarah Kaplan reported in The Washington Post in January:
There are some 645,000 vehicles in the federal fleet. They include roughly 200,000 passenger vehicles, 78,517 heavy-duty trucks, 47,369 vans, 847 ambulances and three limousines.
That’s a lot of vehicles.
As for electrifying the 225,000 Postal Service vehicles, I have written at great length about what a fantastic idea that is. This part of the plan is honestly like a present to me. Thank you, Joe Biden.
It’s not all about cars and trucks, though.
