Joe Biden won the 2020 election in no small part because he had plans and a large scale shift towards renewable energy was always part of those plans. Biden promised to move the country away from fossil fuels and towards a green infrastructure, but promises are not actions. What concrete steps will he take now that he is in office, and what can the American people expect going forward. What will Biden's energy policy look like and what can you expect to change, and what will stay the same?

Promises

The underlyying theme of Biden's energy plan was always job creation. The idea was not to reduce emissions and save the planet so much as create the jobs for the future. Most Americans support a solar power system and other forms of green energy, they do not want to lose their jobs either. Fossil fuels support huge swaths of the economy. Biden's focus on practicalities clearly spoke to people, as he won the election with more votes than any other president in history. However, campaign promises are famously unreliable. Promises and plans are not concrete steps.

First Steps

The administration was quick to take concrete steps in the form of executive orders. The administration had a number of urgent priorities to address, but it was clear that energy and the environment were among them. A number of executive orders by the previous administration were reversed or cancelled. Regulations from four years previous were reinstated, science was officially brought back to the White House, and the environment was put forward as an important national security priority. Respecting his core promise to create jobs rather than remove them, he did not cancel existing drilling contracts on federal lands, but he did put a pause on creating any new ones. The benefit of these executive orders is that they can be started quickly and immediately; the downside is that the next administration can undo them as easily as Biden undid the work of the previous administration.

Realistic Goals

Executive actions are only the beginning; to create lasting change means creating lasting legislation and that means passing actual laws. Legislation must come from the legislative branch and that means Congress. With narrow majorities in the House and the Senate, Biden's power is substantial but not unlimited. The political realities mean that any substantive changes to energy policy will have to stay in the realm of executive actions and the once-a-year budget reconciliation bills. Biden can get a lot done in a budget. You should certainly expect heavy investment in green energy from the federal government in the coming weeks and months.

Stretch Goals

Depending on which way mid-term elections go, Biden could achieve more. With a more solid majority in the Senate and the House, Biden could see bills crossing his desk that promote green energy and create green energy jobs all over the country. The "Green New Deal" may not be his official goal, but he would be foolish not to take the more popular aspects of that proposal and try to implement them wherever he can. If Joe Biden had his druthers, you could certainly see America taking a lead in green energy around the world and leading a concerted global effort to find less environmentally damaging ways to generate energy.

When talking about outcomes, a lot of speculation is involved. Especially in the current moment, a lot of things are in flux. Green energy is already quite popular, and science shows that it is both immediately necessary and eventually inevitable as fossil fuels get harder to find and more expensive to acquire. Outcomes will depend entirely on the will of the electorate, but what exactly that will is has been complicated by factors like the electoral college, gerrymandering and even the two-party system itself. If the Senate flips in two years, that is likely the end of much of Biden's progressive agenda. If it holds or strengthens the Democratic majority, that will create its own set of very different outcomes.