Biden Issues First-Ever National Building Decarbonization Plan

The Biden administration unveiled on Tuesday the first-ever national plan for decarbonizing the nation’s residential and commercial buildings sector.

The plan calls for a 90% reduction in carbon emissions from buildings by 2050. Those cuts are essential because commercial and residential buildings account for more than a third of the US’ greenhouse gas emissions.

If executed, the Energy Department said the emissions reductions will save consumers more than $100 billion in yearly energy costs. As an intermediate goal, the blueprint also seeks to reduce building emissions 65% by 2035.

The blueprint includes policy levers such as energy efficiency, more on-site emissions reductions, a transformation in the way buildings interact with the energy grid, and emissions cuts in the production, transportation, installation, and disposal of building materials.

“We hope this can set the direction and get everybody rowing in the same direction, both across federal agencies but also at the state and local levels,” said Eric Wilson, a senior research engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Wilson conceded that the execution of the plan “may look different in different states or localities, but hopefully this gives everybody the same language and blueprint to be working from.”

The blueprint is nonbinding, meaning it could simply be set aside by another administration, or ignored by building owners and local governments that disagree with it.

But the Biden team is betting that the blueprint will help sell its ideas, aided by a range of tax credits and subsidies available for building improvements in the climate and infrastructure laws.

To ensure the plan is implemented, the document emphasizes the effects decarbonization will have on people in their daily lives, such as improvements in temperature, air quality, safety, and health, according to Jared Langevin, a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

“The building sector is really unique in its ability to emphasize how communities and people go about their everyday lives and experience the world,” Langevin said.

“Pursuing those benefits really transcends a particular focus on climate or emissions, and goes broader in a way that I think has real appeal across the spectrum.”

As with some of the White House’s other decarbonization efforts—such as its bid to use low-carbon concrete, steel, and glass in its own buildings—the plan relies in part on setting an example for the private sector to follow, Wilson said.