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.
Most businesses that decide to act on their net-zero targets reach the same point of friction. Buying carbon credits has meant tracking down brokers, sitting through sales calls, and requesting a quote just to learn a price, sometimes with limited proof of what you are buying.
The earnings calls that quietly reframed climate from sustainability question to operating risk.
Three earnings calls in the last 18 months tell the story without any help from a press release.
Hershey, May 2024: cocoa price exposure compresses margin, and the company attributes part of the cost shock to West African weather. Olam, July 2024: coffee climate exposure quantified in the annual report. JBS, January 2025: supply chain climate disclosures expanded materially in response to investor pressure and regulatory expectation. None of these companies issued the announcement as climate news. They issued it as financial news. The climate-linked supply chain risk did not arrive with a sustainability framing; it arrived as a P&L line.
You are probably reading this article because you suspect the same thing is happening to your business. This piece walks through what is showing up on which earnings calls, how procurement and finance leaders are quantifying the exposure, and what serious corporates are doing about it before the regulator asks.
Where climate risk has already appeared in earnings
The pattern is consistent across resource-intensive sectors. A weather event compresses supply, the price spikes, the cost flows through the income statement, and the analyst on the call asks whether the event is anomalous or structural. Increasingly, the honest answer is the second one.
Cocoa is the cleanest example. The 2023 to 2024 West African harvest fell sharply on the back of erratic rainfall and disease. Cocoa futures more than tripled. Companies with concentrated West African sourcing absorbed the cost; companies with diversified sourcing absorbed less. The exposure was not climate as ESG topic. It was climate as cost of goods.
Coffee follows the same pattern. Brazilian and Vietnamese harvests have moved on weather more sharply across the last several seasons. Roasters with long-tenor supplier relationships and origin diversification have managed the volatility; roasters with spot-market exposure have not. Wheat, sugar, palm oil, beef: the same dynamic in different commodities, a pattern the IPCC AR6 Working Group II report projects will intensify across agricultural systems through mid-century.
What this means: climate risk is no longer a footnote in the 10-K. It is a line item the CFO has to explain on the call.
The three commodity exposures that hit margin first
For most companies with material Scope 3 exposure, three exposures dominate the near-term P&L risk.
- Concentrated single-origin sourcing in a climate-vulnerable region. If your tier-one supply for any material commodity sits in one geography, you have a concentration risk that climate amplifies. Diversification across origins is the obvious hedge, but it takes years to build and requires relationships you cannot acquire by tender.
- Supplier financial fragility under climate stress. Smallholder farmers, who supply a large share of the global cocoa, coffee, and palm oil market, do not carry the balance sheets to absorb yield shocks. When yields collapse, they exit. When they exit, your supply base shrinks, and the surviving suppliers raise prices. The risk is structural, not cyclical.
- Logistics and storage exposure to extreme weather. Hurricane disruptions to Gulf shipping, drought-driven Panama Canal restrictions, flooding in European inland waterways: each of these has moved input costs in the last three years, a pattern documented in Munich Re’s natural catastrophe data. The exposure shows up as a one-quarter event in the financial press but accumulates over time on the cost line.
TCFD and ISSB disclosure changes
The disclosure architecture has now caught up with the risk. The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, whose recommendations are now embedded in the ISSB’s IFRS S2 climate standard, requires companies to disclose climate-related risks across physical and transition categories, with quantification where possible.
For physical risk specifically (the climate-linked supply chain risk you are reading about), the disclosure must address both acute exposures (extreme weather events) and chronic exposures (gradual changes in temperature, precipitation, and growing seasons). The disclosure must address the time horizon over which the risk is material, the parts of the value chain exposed, and the financial impact under different scenarios.
The CSRD imposes similar requirements under European law, with double materiality (both financial and impact materiality) embedded in the assessment. The practical effect: your auditors and your investor relations team now need a defensible answer to the climate-linked supply chain risk question, and the answer needs to be quantified.
What procurement and finance can do now
Three actions matter near-term.
Map your exposure. Most companies do not have a clear view of which tier-one and tier-two suppliers sit in which climate-vulnerable geographies. Without the map, you cannot quantify the risk, and without the quantification, you cannot disclose it credibly. The map is the foundation, and World Resources Institute climate risk research provides useful public tooling to start.
Diversify and deepen, in that order. Diversification across origins reduces concentration risk, but the deeper move is to invest in the resilience of the suppliers you already have. Regenerative practices, agroforestry, soil health interventions: these reduce yield volatility under climate stress and protect your input cost trajectory.
Embed the climate spend inside procurement, not outside it. Treating climate risk as a sustainability cost line subordinates it to the ESG budget. Treating it as a procurement and resilience investment puts it in the budget that matters, which is the cost-of-goods budget that the CFO defends quarterly.
Nature-based supply chain investments are the asset class designed for exactly this purpose. They sit inside the value chain, they reduce climate-linked supply risk, they generate verifiable Scope 3 reductions, and they produce the documentation an auditor and a regulator can both test.
If you are quantifying climate-linked supply chain risk in advance of the next earnings cycle or the next disclosure period, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you map your exposure and structure a Dual-Value Model response that addresses reduction, resilience, and disclosure-readiness in a single program. Schedule a consultation.
More and more small and medium-sized businesses are hearing the same question from their larger customers: What is your carbon footprint? That question now travels down entire supply chains, and it arrives next to tender requirements, certification criteria, and rising customer expectations.
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