President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw presidential election this Sunday marks a significant turn in American politics. During his tenure, the country has seen the introduction, establishment, and amendment of numerous climate policies involving massive investments. The past four years under the Biden administration have been eventful from a climate change perspective. Let’s refresh our memory on the climate agendas rolled out by this government.
Key Highlights of Biden’s Climate Change Plan
“That’s why, when people talk about climate, I think jobs. Within our climate response lies an extraordinary engine of job creation and economic opportunity ready to be fired up. That’s why I’ve proposed a huge investment in American infrastructure and American innovation to tap the economic opportunity that climate change presents our workers and our communities, especially those too often that have — left out and left behind.”
-Remarks by President Biden at the Virtual Leaders Summit on Climate Opening Session (source: The White House)
Rejoined the Paris Agreement
From day one, Biden initiated the process for the U.S. to rejoin the Paris Agreement. The U.S. officially re-entered the agreement shortly after. Biden issued an executive order on tackling the “Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad”, creating the position of Special Presidential Envoy for Climate and announcing several high-level climate summits. Later, he set a target to reduce carbon emissions by at least 50% below 2005 levels by 2030. That was a historic announcement!
Signed the Inflation Reduction Act
He signed the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022. Notably, it’s one of the most critical climate agendas of America. It includes significant investments in climate protection, such as tax credits for households to reduce energy costs, funding for clean energy production, and incentives to lower carbon emissions. The administration concentrated on creating tax credit guidelines and initiating programs to execute its various clean energy measures. To achieve excellence in climate action, they needed to maintain prompt and fair implementation of the legislation while also filling policy gaps.
Climate-Smart Stimulus Package to Revive from COVID-19.
Biden proposed a $2 trillion climate-smart stimulus package to boost the domestic economy, create jobs, and expand America’s clean energy sector. It surpassed the investments made in the 2009 economic recovery package. He prioritized modernizing the electricity grid, electrifying schools, and transit buses, enhancing the transportation system, upgrading public schools, boosting industrial innovation, and restoring trees to the landscape.
Biden committed to ensuring that at least 40% of the funding benefits go to the less-privileged communities. These investments targeted both short-term and long-term emissions-reduction goals. They installed solar, wind, heat pumps, and electric vehicles to cut costs. At the same time, they invested in future technologies which included the heavy emission sectors like steel, geothermal systems, and clean hydrogen.
Curb Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and Methane Action Plan
The President ratified the Kigali Amendment to reduce hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) in September 2022. The EPA issued regulations to phase down HFCs under the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act of 2020.
In November 2022, the Biden administration updated the Methane Action Plan with 50 measures supported by $20 billion from various laws. The Inflation Reduction Act introduced a methane emissions fee for oil and gas facilities, starting in 2024 and increasing to $1,500 per metric ton by 2026. At the 2023 UN climate summit (COP28), the administration announced strict standards to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector. On January 12, 2024, the EPA proposed rules to enforce this fee.
Biden helped launch the Global Methane Pledge at the 2021 UN Climate Summit (COP26). By December 2023, 155 countries had committed to cutting their methane emissions by at least 30% by 2030.
source: World Resources Institute
Biden’s Milestones for the Energy Sector
Offshore wind was a crucial part of Biden’s promise to combat climate change that would generate jobs and enhance the economy. Biden approved the first U.S. offshore wind project and set new standards to cut methane emissions, which will prevent the equivalent of 1.5 billion tons of CO2. The American Clean Power Association (ACP) projected around 14 GW of offshore wind capacity along U.S. coastlines by 2030. This fell short of the 30 GW goal set by President Joe Biden’s administration in 2021 to boost the domestic energy industry.
Biden and the EPA introduced national carbon pollution standards, mandating a 90% reduction in emissions from coal and new gas plants. They also modernized the federal environmental review process under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The rule introduces a new permit for efficiencies from the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023.
Biden also transformed the energy-efficiency standards for residential water heaters. These standards cut energy waste and carbon pollution. He envisioned that this would save nearly $1 trillion over 30 years and reduce utility bills by $100 or more per year for the average family.
Image: EIA projects renewables share of the U.S. electricity generation mix will double by 2050
Finally, Biden signed the ADVANCE Act in July this year to support advanced nuclear technologies and the continued operation of existing nuclear plants. Recently, President Biden signed The Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act to strengthen America’s energy and economic security, and eventually eliminate reliance on Russia for nuclear power.
Investments in CDR projects
On May 19, 2022, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced a $3.5 billion funding opportunity from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to capture and store CO2 directly from the air. The Regional Direct Air Capture Hubs program supported four large-scale hubs with carbon dioxide removal (CDR) projects. These hubs created jobs, engaged communities, and advanced environmental justice. Alongside other decarbonization efforts, this technology played a key role in achieving President Biden’s net-zero economy goal by 2050.
Curbing Transport Emissions
During his early tenure in 2021, Biden signed the bipartisan Infrastructure Act, allocating over $100 billion for rail, mass transit, charging stations, and zero-emission ferries and buses.
On March 29, 2024, the Biden-Harris Administration finalized the historic greenhouse gas standards ever for heavy-duty vehicles. This action protects public health, addresses the climate crisis, and keeps the American economy moving. The EPA adopted new emission rules for cars, aiming to cut 50% of CO2 emissions by 2032 and mitigate 7 billion tons of CO2 in the next 30 years. This rule can eliminate more GHG emissions than any other climate rule in U.S. history.
This year EPA also issued carbon emissions limits for heavy trucks, estimating a prevention of 1 billion tons of CO2 emissions. It introduced 3,400 electric school buses, and Biden released $1.7 billion for electric vehicle manufacturing. Additionally, the government released new standards for biofuels.
Despite global challenges, the U.S. has set strong examples in tackling climate change. President Joe Biden’s groundbreaking initiatives have significantly transformed the climate landscape. As America approaches a new presidential term, we hope the new leader continues to take responsible actions and drive further progress in combating climate change.
- FURTHER READING: Multi-Billion Dollar U.S. Clean Energy Tax Credits Are Here
The post Top Achievements in Joe Biden’s Climate Agenda for America appeared first on Carbon Credits.
The accounting differences that decide whether your nature investment shows up in inventory, in BVCM, or nowhere at all.
The question reaches a procurement team about three weeks before the next sustainability committee meeting. Someone has read about insetting. Someone else has just signed off on an offset purchase. The CSO wants to know if the two are interchangeable. The answer is no, and the GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard is the reason why.
This article walks through what each term means at audit-grade specificity, what the standards actually say about how each gets counted, and how to decide which tool fits which target. The insetting vs offsetting question is one of the most-searched in corporate climate strategy, and one of the most poorly answered. By the end of this piece, you should be able to brief a committee on the difference without notes.
The two definitions, in plain English
Offsetting means buying carbon credits generated outside your value chain and retiring them against your residual emissions. The reduction happens somewhere else, financed by you, and the credit is the receipt.
Insetting means investing in emission reductions or removals inside your own value chain, typically with suppliers, where the reduction is directly linked to the products and services you buy. The reduction happens inside the boundary of your Scope 3 inventory, and the accounting treatment is fundamentally different.
The shorthand from the University of Oxford’s Nature-based Insetting Initiative is useful: insetting is what you do with the supply chain you have; offsetting is what you do with the supply chain you do not have.
What the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard actually says
The GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard, finalised in 2024 after a multi-year pilot, sets the rules for how land-based emission reductions and removals enter corporate inventories. The Standard distinguishes between inventory accounting (Scope 1, 2, and 3) and project or intervention accounting (a separate methodology for crediting).
For insetting, the practical implication is that supplier-level interventions, when properly measured and attributed, can reduce your Scope 3 category 1 (purchased goods and services) emissions in your inventory. The reduction is not a credit retired against the inventory; it is a lower inventory number, period.
For offsetting, the credit is retired separately. It can be reported as a contribution toward a net-zero claim under the SBTi Beyond Value Chain Mitigation framework or as part of a VCMI Carbon Integrity claim, but it does not lower the inventory number.
A practical consequence: if your Science Based Target requires a 50% absolute reduction in Scope 3 emissions by 2030, insetting moves you toward the target. Offsetting does not. This single point of difference reshapes the procurement decision.
When insetting counts toward Scope 3 (and when it does not)
Insetting counts toward Scope 3 only when several conditions are met:
- The intervention must occur with an entity in your value chain.
- The emissions reduction or removal must be measured against a defensible baseline.
- The reduction must be attributed to your share of that supplier’s output, not double-counted with other buyers.
- It must follow the inventory accounting rules in the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard, not the project accounting rules used to generate credits.
The most common failure mode is double counting. If your supplier sells the same reduction as a credit on the voluntary market and also reports it to you as a Scope 3 reduction, the math breaks. The Standard requires you to address this risk, typically by purchasing and retiring the supplier-issued credit as part of your inventory or by contractual provisions that prevent the supplier from selling the reduction twice.
When insetting does not count toward Scope 3: when the intervention sits with a supplier you do not buy from, when the baseline is not defensible, when the attribution is unclear, or when the documentation does not survive audit. Those cases default to Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, which is still useful but operates on a different ledger.
The procurement and supplier engagement question
Insetting is harder than offsetting. That is the unfashionable truth most buyers eventually confront. Offsetting is a transaction; insetting is a relationship.
To run an insetting program, you need supplier mapping precise enough to know which farms or facilities sit at which Scope 3 boundary. You need an engagement model that gets suppliers to participate, which usually requires multi-year commitments and shared economics. You need an MRV architecture that measures the right things and produces audit-ready documentation. And you need a contractual structure that prevents double counting and protects both sides.
The trade-off you receive in return is significant. Reductions count against your inventory rather than your residual. Supplier relationships deepen, which protects sourcing continuity. Yield and quality improvements often follow regenerative interventions, which reduces your input cost over time. And the regulatory file, under CSRD, CSDDD, EUDR, and the SBTi FLAG Guidance, is materially stronger.
Choosing the right tool for the right target
A practical decision rule. If your target is a science-based Scope 3 reduction and you operate in a FLAG sector or source FLAG commodities, insetting is the structurally correct tool. If your target is a net-zero claim that includes neutralising hard-to-abate residual emissions outside your value chain, BVCM via high-integrity offsets is the structurally correct tool. Most companies with material Scope 3 exposure need both, in different proportions, sequenced over time.
The sequencing matters. Insetting takes longer to stand up but produces a permanent reduction in the inventory. Offsetting can be transacted faster but does not change the inventory and now sits under tighter claim restrictions. Treat them as complementary tools with different jobs, not as substitutes. The Accountability Framework Initiative and the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions both provide useful guardrails for the insetting side, with biodiversity, human rights, and benefit-sharing requirements that go beyond carbon math.
If you are mapping a Scope 3 reduction roadmap and need to scope which interventions count toward your inventory versus which sit in Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you structure a nature-based supply chain investment program that fits your FLAG exposure, your target architecture, and your audit horizon. Schedule a consultation.
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