Biden Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi thinks Democrats have green momentum

twenty seven in the fight against climate change. We are rapidly approaching the end of week one at COP twenty seven, and all eyes are turning to the US, with President Biden due to make a flying visit on Friday. Later in this episode, we'll hear from the White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zad about how he plans to advance the climate agenda domestically in the US. But with me now is John Parr, head of ESG and Energy at Bloomberg News. Welcome to the show. John, great to be here.

How have you found COP so far? This is only my second COP. I'm used to covering events that are quite self contained, are quite focused on two or three particular points about G seven and G twenties, but just the sheer range of issues here can be a little overwhelming. But what I've been struck by, I mean, obviously the

loss and damage story has been front and center. This is the Africa COP and we're seeing the African nations coming to the table demanding more money as expected, the rich countries are saying nice warm words, no sign of that money coming. The other thing I've really noticed how the biodiversity agenda is really becoming more and more important. People are becoming more and more vocal about it, Bankers

are becoming more and more interested in it. So when I leave COP, that's something I want to dig more into the whole question of rainforest preservations. How can Wall Street, how can finance be a part of that? Is this just another strand of greenwashing or is this a new and potent frontier in the climate debate. Now, let's look at the current geopolitical situation and how do you think that's affecting Top twenty seven. Well, I think the current

geopolitical situation is obviously very very fraught. This is a COP that is being overshadowed, of course by the energy crisis by Ukraine, and I think there's two ways of looking at that. On the one hand, you can argue that the climate story is becoming less and less important for rich countries, especially as they scramble to guarantee their energy security. But also, I mean, I've heard a lot of people saying this is just going to accelerate the

energy transition. I've been particularly struck in the run up to COP what we actually so I'm based in London, was just how controversial the whole question of whether Rishi Sunac would come to cop or not was. It was front page news in the way that I just don't think would have been the case five years ago. I think the energy crisis story is the number one story in the world right now, but I think in the minds of the electorate it is actually pushing the green

energy security story higher up the agenda. Now. Biden will be speaking on Friday. What do you expect. How will that change things? I don't know if it'll change Well, okay, there's a few things to unpack there. On the one hand, he has a good story to tell. He's coming on the back of midterm results as we speak, but they did much better than expect it. He's coming on the back of passing the Inflation Reduction Act, he can, you know, he can credibly come to this cop and say, we

America are finally stepping up to the plate. We are doing our bits. We are pouring money into into the clean technologies that are going to take us to net zero. On the other side, the developing world will say, well, that's great, you're looking after yourself. You're pouring money into

your own domestic green technologies. A that looks like protectism to us given the terms and conditions of IRA and B. You know, you're putting all this money three hundred and fifty billion or whatever it is into your own domestic technologies and you can't give us a tiny, tiny fraction of that. So it could go both ways for him. He'll stand up and say, we're doing giving all this money to domestic industry. African countries will be like, well, I'm sure many of them will sit back on their

seats and stroke their chins and say, what about us. Now, if he does end up losing one of the Houses of Congress, how does that affect his climate agenda? Well, that's a big problem, right. I mean, I think the margin of the majority that they had was always very, very narrow. They didn't even have a majority in the Senate. They needed Kamala Harris is casting voute to get a lot of stuff done there, so they squeeze as much

of juice out of that as they possibly could. I think now it's going to be very very difficult, certainly when it comes to getting more at climate aid to the rest of the world that does need to go through Congress. It's going to be very very hard. That said, I think if you're an opportunistic president and if the staff around them are thinking cleverly, you're going to think, Okay,

are the Republicans who we can break off? And you know, especially if it's really like if it's a very very slim and Republican majority in the House, maybe there's a few we can pick off and get them to back bits and pieces of climate legislation. Carbon capture staff was

done under Trump, so it was not impossible. And I think one of the most interesting pieces of climate journalism I've read this year was a Bloomberg opinion piece by my colleague Liam Denning where he argued, if you look at the US districts, if you break down the US district by district, some of the districts that will benefit the most from the Inflation Reduction Act are actually Republican districts. Yeah, they are the places where there's a lot of land

and renewable energy. If you're building it is going to require a lot of land, exactly. So it's going to become clear over time to voters in that state that this, whatever you think about capitalism, solar and wind and carbon capture, it creates jobs. And if you're an opportunity Republican politician, maybe it's not in new interests to vote against climate legislation.

And in fact, maybe it's in my interests to vote for climate legislation that's well structured and will benefit my constituency. So it's not impossible that over the next two years, certainly, I'm sure that Democrats will try the White House will try to see stuff getting through, and I think as the economy of America changes, and as the sort of the energy mix in the American economy changes, we might see new power dynamics playing out when it comes to

climate legislation that Guests passed. I suppose the one thing that Democrats will be careful to do or not to do, is to call a climate legislation find another word for it. I mean we're talking about the Inaction Act exactly. Thank you, John. My pleasure talking of Biden and the midterms. After the break, we'll be diving deep into how the US can advance its domestic climate agenda, with White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zadi joining me. Now is Ali Zadi, the White

House National Climate Advisor. We recorded the conversation live as part of the Bloomberg Green Event at COP twenty seven. If you'd like to see the full video of the conversation or more videos from the event, head to the Bloomberg Live YouTube channel linked in the show notes. So, Ali Zadi, welcome to Zero. All right, I'm on the podcast. I'm excited. Now we're going to talk a lot about

collaboration because we're here at COP. But I cannot not talk about a big competition that's happening in Australia where India is right now playing a semifinal and there's a very high chance that India and Pakistan. I was born in India, You're a born in Pakistan is going to be playing the final on Sunday. Who are you excited about it? Well? I think I have to root for the Green cricket team, right, the Green cricket team. I gonna be on brand. Well, look, India has the Blue

Jays Democrats. You have to root for India. Now, well, okay, let's put rivalles apart and talk climate. And let me start by doing you a favor and list all of the domestic climate successes of the Biden administration. Will be in the files and you can you can fill the gaps if I have any. So you passed two bills with bipartisan support. You actually got Republicans to vote for

climate policy. Huge congratulations. You ratified the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, which reduces the amount of refrigerent and gases put into the atmosphere and if everyone follows it, that could cut temperatures by point five degrees celsius. A huge win. But the US was laid to the party. But you've got it done. Very important. You passed the IRA the biggest climate the USS bust but in und seventy billion dollars at least to its climate funding. Now

did I miss anything? Oh yeah, we set new standards on cars and trucks, Presidents side and executive order. We're now moving towards fifty percent electric by twenty thirty. In the industrial sector oil and gas, we issued a methane reduction program that by our measure at least already is aiming at something like one hundred million metric tons. That's over a percentage point of US emissions reductions. We're doing stuff on federal procurement, which I hope we'll talk about.

That's path breaking steel, cement, flat glass clean now and in the future. We're doing work on resilience and adaptation. You know, one of the things we have to realize is even if we're successful, we're still going to have to deal with the fires, the droughts, the floods, the hurricanes. We made a fifty billion dollar investment, but we're also setting new codes and standards and doing research and development

in that direction. We are, I think, doing really inventive work in next generation of building technologies, setting standards for a multitude of commercial and residential appliances making them more energy efficient, leading the marketplace in that regard. And you know, it can go on and on and on. But I think the other place where I would point folks to is the integration between what we're doing domestically and what we're doing internationally. You know, the relationship with the EU

on the carbon adjustment integrating considerations around CO two. In the way steel moves across borders, that's path breaking. So you know, so many touch points and very excited did hopefully to drill down into some of them. Well, all those wins get you to forty percent reduction by twenty thirty, it's still far away from the fifty percent target that Biden has said, and your job as the National Climate

Advisor is to make sure that gap doesn't exist. What are you doing additionally, now we've talked about a long list to fill that gap, So far away is subjective. Um, well, you're at thirty percent reduction now, so you're in a percent there, then you're going ten percent more. So that's halfway if you go from where you are today. Yeah, U so, I you know, I think it's two thirds of where we are from now. But I get you on the baselines. Um, never quibble with the terminal on

the map. But but um, look, I think there there are a few things. Number one, the power sector drives a huge amount of the emissions reductions in this twenty thirty time horizon. And you know, we talk a lot about this being the decisive decade for climate action. That's obviously not something we invented. It's a reality that the science imposes on us and that we're seeing all in our communities. But for the power sector, decisive decade means delivery, right,

I mean steel in the ground. And I think this is a challenge that folks face in a lot of jurisdictions around the world. How do we actually build these projects? Do we get the permitting done, do we get the interconnection done. It's one thing to get the planning done for a solar project, it's another to make sure it's actually putting electrons on the gridge. So that's going to

be a big variable. The second thing i'd note is there are a lot of these places that we've considered for a really long time to be hard to decarbonize, right, And you know, President Biden, I think teases his team all the time the hard things are what we're supposed to do in America, And so we've really gone and made a real focus of the industrial sector and the

agriculture sector these hard to decarbonize places as opportunities. There's funding for that in Inflation Reduction SECT and hundreds of millions of metrics, tons of opportunity. Now, let's come to the news outside of cop which is the midterms. It seems likely, it hasn't been called yet, but it seems likely that the Democrats may lose at least one of the houses, which means that passing new legislation, any legislation,

is going to be nearly impossible. Should we expect no more new climate laws for the next two years from you? So let me say three things, one of which is slightly snarky. I went back and I read all of the headlines from the last time we came to the cop and you know, we had the Post and Reuters and Times and others saying there's a cloud hanging over Biden and will he really deliver? And he's here, but

can he get Congress to come along with him? Point number one is we did people love to I think view the process with skepticism, and I think, time and time and time again, Joe Biden is delivered. So that's the thing number one. Thing Number two is the point that you made earlier. The bipartisan infrastructure law Republicans and Democrats included fifteen billion dollars for an electric vehicle charging network five hundred thousand chargers coast to coast in the

United States, made by union workers in America. Right, that same bill included fifteen billion dollars to modernize our grid, fifty billion dollars to take on resilience. So Joe Biden was able to get Republicans to vote for that. He was able to get Republicans to vote for the Kagali Amendment ratification. Third point, the political economy of climate action

in the United States. And I say this as someone who's in the Obama administration, who's been in the private sector, who's sat at a university and mused at what's going on from Stanford, beautiful place to muse at the world from and the over that longitude. The secular, an unambiguous trend of political economy in the United States on climate

action is positive. And the reason is because we now see the economic upside not just in the boardroom, but for our workers and for our communities, and we're fully leaned into that. Well, I should respond to the snot because the job of a journalist is to be fair, be fair, to be fair. There was a cloud hanging over Biden. To be fair, I started with the successes of the Biden administration. But my question was, will there be no more new climate laws over the next two years?

You know, I think that's yet to be seen. Just to go back in time, December twenty twenty, I'm just giving you the best analogy I can or contrast case rather not analogy. December twenty twenty, the United States Congress passed a bipartisan energy law that included funding for innovation on clean energy technologies. It passed the Aim Act, which actually allows us to set rules and we have to phase down hydrofluora carbons. That was a Republican congressman and

a Republican president signed it. Yeah, there was a Common Capture Act that was passed in the Trump So, you know, I think it's possible, it's feasible, and we're trying to build the political economy for action. I'm not going to prejudge the next two years, but I'll say this, We've got momentum, we've got the leader, and we're going to keep trying to move forward. Well, the reality is also that the division in the US in politics is growing on all fronts, but the climate division has been a

very clear one for some time. And so if we look at the Inflation Reduction Act, which is going to be deployed and will require the support of Republican states for those deployments to actually happen for all that money to be actually spent, we know that Republicans can act against their interest, as they are doing with ESG investments,

they may do so with IRA just for spite. What are the bottlenecks and how you're tackling those, Well, one thing I think you do is to be very purposeful about pushing for a visible difference in as many communities in every zip code of the United States as possible. And I'll give you the example of our Climate Smart ag culture program. So in September we issued two point eight billion dollars to incentivize farmers to use climate smart

agriculture practices. Fifty states, all fifty states the United States, fifty thousand farms, twenty million acres. Right. So I think that's part of how you deal with it, is to make sure that everybody is being benefiting from the upside. The second is we've got to engage with these governors. So the electric vehicle charging money I's talked about, that money runs through the states. Not all of our states have democratic governors. All fifty states submitted a plan to

get the money. So it's a lot of shoe leather we get. We go through a lot of shoes to get this done. But we're going to keep hustling and we're going to keep trying to bring people along. I think that you know, the skepticism is right because it's informed by choices vote an elected office have made that I think are not representative of the best economic interests

of their constituents. But to us, the economics are irresistible, and the more we talk about them, the harder it becomes for people to not be responsive to what's the best for the American people. Now, talking of communities and changing the political economy, you've made a commitment to justice forty This is the idea of where forty percent of the benefits from many of the federal climate and environmental programs will go to disadvantaged communities. And that's very welcome

and will change the political economy. But give me an example, a specific one of how exactly it works. That's a good question, And this is one that's really near and dear to my heart. I actually before the Biden administration went to the state of New York where they passed this legislation to do thirty five percent of the benefits. And then and you know, talking to the at the time, the candidate Biden, and he says, well's go do forty

and now we're doing it. An example of that, we have a program through the Federal Energy Management Agency FEMA. It's a new newish program called Brick, which is about building resilience into our communities. That program included justice forty as part of its criteria for putting dollars out. Multiple billions of dollars have moved out, and they have prioritized

communities as are disadvantaged. One very specific grant that I think is illustrative is a wastewater facility in Jacksonville, Florida. It serves that sort of southern part of Georgia and northern part of Florida. And you know, this is like so many communities everybody knows, right the lower lying areas

or the places where lower income folks live. And as sea levels rise and the flooding increases over time, those facilities don't hold up and people are absorbing literal filth because we fail to invest brick that grant because of Justice forty. Prioritizing them is going to help them make that facility more resilient and adapt it to the changing climate. That's a big deal, I would say, though, low lying

areas are also very attractive to rich people. Florida and its coast is a real good example a Miami beach partisan. So I hear you now. A lot of the talk at COUP twenty seven is about how countries can collaborate. But we live in a cricket except on cricket, but we live in a capitalistic economy, and competition rules the world. Now. With the IRA, the US has made its biggest bet yet to build green technologies. But those industries have already been built in China, not all of them, but most

of them. Is the IRA a signal that the US is more now in competition than in collaboration with China. Because Carry Secretary Carry confirmed there are no conversations formally happening between US and China collaboration anymore on climate. We talked about this during the years President Trump was in office. The race in the clean energy economy doesn't choose its pace based on whether or not the United States has chosen to run hard, and so people have been competing

on these technologies. And I think what's powerful now is we're investing in not only building the demand side of our market. Right, We're not just deploying the wind turbines in our tax code. We have also created a section forty five X, I know, really exciting name to incent the manufacturing of those components in the United States. And if you want the full value of the deployment credit, you have to also get a bunch of the steel

and the input materials from the United States. So heck, yeah, we're running to win, and that doesn't come I think at the exclusion of anybody. You know, when I think about the President's Climate Agenda, one of the three core elements of it is this aspect of climate solutions, clean energy technologies made in America. And the way I think about it is that's America leading by example, not by words. So let's have a race to the top. The problem

is the US is starting lead China. Between around twenty ten and twenty eighteen, spend sixty billion dollars just on electric cars and batteries, only on one tiny sector of the decombinization pie China has a headstock at least a decade. How do you think the US will catch up? You know, I I'm pretty bullish on the United States, which is not unexpected. I taught graduate STEM students. We've got the brightest minds in our universities. Our national labs are gone.

National lab helped invent that technology. China's making the money though, and now, no, no, and now, but look look at what's happening since the President took office. Forget all of the stuff. We've invested one hundred billion dollars of private capital flowing in to make the stuff in America, right, not just from US companies, foreign direct investment into the United States as well. So you know, again one of

those against Biden, you can bet against America. But I feel pretty good that we've got a chance to really seize the leadership here and lift up workers and communities and process. One of those companies is called CTL. It is now the world's largest battery maker. It's Chinese. It

is at the heart of German industry. Now there's a big, big battery plant that they have in Germany, the home of automobile, supplying the very heart of the future transportation for electric cars, and it is looking to build a plant in North America. Probably not in the US as we understand, but private capital can also come in from Chinese companies that are leading on this. That's true. And you know what, anyone who rests on today's technology is

also probably in for an awakening at some point. Right, You've got sure, you've got some of the incumbents. We also got companies that are invested in the next general beyond lithium ion right, companies like form Energy that are now building fabs in the United States. So, you know, I think this is a dynamic market. We've got ev penetration, we've got momentum on it, but I think the lead will change a bunch of times. And again we're running

faster and faster now. Domestic policies that we've talked about a bunch of times only become effective if the rules are in place. And one place where the Biden administration can be fairly criticized is that rulemaking has been slow, things like setting standards for tailpipe emissions, for power plants, for methane. As we move into the second half of this term, is there a renewed focus on making rules and how are you going to deal with the legal

challenges that will inevitably come. So many thoughts on this, but let me let me start with the day one of the Biden administration. On day one of the Biden administration, President sign executive order said, let's take on all of the regulatory rollbacks that had taken place in the administration prior. About two hundred items to take on. We did that.

He looked around the agencies that set these rules. A lot of them had been decimated in terms of human capital, some of them had stopped collecting the data that you need to actually do the regulatory work. We've been doing the work of rebuilding them. And at the same time, we've set rules for hydroch folqarpments we've in the Obama administration, they they set only standards for new sources of methane.

We propose standards for existing sources of methane. Our fuel economy standards that we've finalized go further and faster than anything anyone's ever done before. So and as I said, over a hundred actions on energy efficiency through the Department of Energy on the regulatory sign. So if the question is, hey, you guys have been going really fast, really hard at trying to seize the full economic opportunity that climate change represents for the American people. Are you going to keep

running fast? The answer is no, We're going to run faster. All right. Now, we are at COP twenty seven, and we should talk about the questions being raised by developing countries here at COP twenty seven, and there is a domestic question that I want to ask you about it now. To give you a context, yesterday was announced that the US, through its Export Import Bank, is giving Romania three billion dollars towards it's nine billion dollars of building two nuclear reactors.

That sum is approximately the amount that the US gives in climate finance to developing countries. So when the US comes here and does not show more money, that's not really the case that there is no more money to be given. It's that there isn't the political will. Your job as a domestic national climate advisor is all also to make sure that the president can have money from the Congress to live up to the eleven billion dollars that he has promised. How are you going to make

that happen? Number one? I think it's us recognizing that we are in a shared challenge with folks all around the world, and that we must take all of this on together. And I think the place where we are succeeding in doing that, you know, going into Paris something like five six degrees coming into this administration something like three degrees, coming out of Glasgow under two degrees. Now, finally, I know you don't like to scoop your boss. He's

coming tomorrow. But if you were writing Biden's speech, what would you say? That's that's a funny one. Uh, what a hypothetical. Look, I you know, I think I think for the President, it's important for him to convey where all of this comes from. For him. I've been fortunate enough to sit on the plane with him, sitting the car with him, sitting the oval with him, and hear an absorb his passion and where his focus on climate comes from. And it's and it's totally in his core.

That's why it's gotten the prioritization that it's gotten in this administration. I think that's a really important thing for everyone to understand and for them to hear. I think the second is for people to understand the progress we've made. You know, the same folks who fed us denial and delay now want to feed us cynicism. They want to say that no matter how many people show up, no matter how many people push, no matter how many meetings we have, and how many agreements we reach, that we

won't make progress, but we are. And I think it's important for the President of the United States to share his perspective on that. And then the third is there's a lot of talk about the headwinds to climate action these days, right energy security, concerns, concerns around consumer costs.

I think what we've discovered in the United States is that clean energy and the solutions around climate actually help us not only meet the moment on this environmental objective, but help consumers, help manufacturing, help our national security, help our energy security. That's the case I think he should make here and to all the leaders around the world, And I think if they hear that and they understand it, we will redouble our efforts collectively to move in the

direction we need to. Thank you, Elizadi, Thank you so much, Thanks so much for listening to Zero. If you like the show, please rate, review and subscribe, Tell a friend, or tell Biden's speechwriter. If you've got a suggestion for a gastra topic or something you just want us to look into. Get in touch at zero Pod at bloomberg dot net. Also, while at COP twenty seven, the Bloomberg Green paywall is down. Head to bloombag dot com slash green to read all our latest coverage and everything in

the archives for Absolutely Free. Zero's producer is Oscar Boyd and senior producer is Christine driscoll. Our theme music is composed by Wonderley Special thanks to Kirubin Grim and Stacy walk I. Am Akshatrati back late this week with more from COP twenty seven.