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Mayor Buttigieg is the youngest candidate running for President of the United States. You would think that being the youngest candidate would inherently mean being the most ambitious candidate when it comes to addressing climate change. Unfortunately, Mayor Buttigieg’s climate goals are what environmentalists have come to expect from mainstream Democrats — bromides (trite and unoriginal ideas, typically intended to soothe or placate).

Let’s take a closer look at what he is proposing.

On Day 1, he will be announcing a Clean Energy Victory Plan. We don’t know if the Clean Energy Victory Plan is what he already has outlined on his website or if this is a secret Clean Energy Victory Plan that he is waiting to reveal on Day 1. Or, perhaps it is something that he’ll develop on the campaign trail or with the transition team once he is elected. We don’t know. But, what we do know is that “Victory” is part of the title of the plan, so you know it is going to be good.

By 2025, he would like to “double clean electricity generated in the United States.” This sounds big. Doubling anything just sounds impressive. Except for renewable energy electricity generation, doubling would be extremely lazy and unambitious. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, we have doubled our renewable energy electricity generation since 2008 from almost 400 million megawatthours to 800 million megawatthours. And, that doubling was with hydro staying mostly at the same level and solar and wind driving most of the growth resulting in just 17.6% of electricity generation being from renewables in 2018. So, if we double that 17.6% between now and 2025, and assume that electricity demand will stay the same (which it won’t), then we only get to 35.2% of our electricity generation generated by renewables.

Keep in mind that 2025 is more than half way through the 12-year time horizon given to us by the IPCC. The report from the U.S. EIA also says, “In 2008, the United States had 25 gigawatts (GW) of wind generating capacity. By the end of 2018, 94 GW of wind generating capacity was operating on the electric grid.” So, in other words, doubling wind-generating capacity would be growing the industry at roughly the same pace as the last decade, in other words maintaining the status quo. Taking note of solar’s meteoric rise over the past 10 years is even more illustrative of how unambitious Mayor Buttigieg’s proposal is. In the same report, the U.S. EIA said, “Similarly, installed solar capacity grew from an estimated less than 1 GW in 2008 to 51 GW in 2018.” That’s a lot more than doubling and the solar market is trending even faster growth than the previous decade. Mayor Buttigieg’s goal of doubling by 2025 is so absurdly easy and unambitious.

Mayor Buttigieg’s top line goals for 2035, 2040, and 2050 are as follows:

· By 2035, build a clean electricity system with zero emissions and require zero emissions for all new passenger vehicles.

· By 2040, require net-zero emissions for all new heavy-duty vehicles, buses, rail, ships, and aircraft and develop a thriving carbon removal industry.

· By 2050, achieve net-zero emissions from industry, including steel and concrete, manufacturing,and agriculture sectors.

These are fine goals, though they are very easy hurdles given the absurdly long time horizon. We would expect nothing less from a Democratic Presidential Candidate. Mayor Buttigieg’s plan also states, “We will quadruple federal clean energy R&D funding to $25 billion per year by 2025, investing more than $200 billion over 10 years.​” Again, this is a fine goal, but why wait until your second term. Bill Gates is suggesting we triple our energy Research and Development budget now. What is the logic of waiting 4 years? Would a President Buttigieg not be able to get the votes for quadrupling the energy R&D budget until his second term?

Despite Mayor Buttigieg’s lackluster goal-setting, his plan actually does include numerous creative and well-researched policy and finance mechanisms to drive progress in the climate and energy arena. His plan includes creative ideas such as Climate Action Bonds, a Clean Energy Bank, a Cleantech Investment Fund, a Global Investment Initiative, and whole lot more. HOWEVER, there is a major disconnect between the vision and capability of the tools he is proposing to use and the vision and schedule of what he is proposing we build with those tools.

In other words, Mayor Buttigieg seems to have a good handle on how to deeply decarbonize our economy. In fact, his handle on the policy and finance mechanisms is exactly what you would expect of a Rhodes Scholar. BUT, why, why, why are Mayor Buttigieg’s climate goals so unambitious? Mayor Buttigieg, please change your headline climate goals to be more ambitious.