On the Road to Rebuilding U.S. Climate Action

NECEC Celebrates Biden Action Rejoining Paris Agreement

Today, we join with so many across the country and the world in celebrating the inauguration of President Biden and Vice President Harris and applauding the President’s executive order recommitting the U.S. to the Paris Climate Agreement. This action on day one of his presidency signals to the world that President Biden is serious about rejoining the global climate effort and putting the United States on a leadership path to a clean energy economy. With the strongest climate platform in history and a cabinet of climate change and clean energy experts behind him, President Biden and the U.S. stand to lead the world in building a more resilient, equitable, and sustainable economy.

NECEC has been committed to supporting the Paris Climate Agreement and the UNFCCC COP process from the start:

• In November 2015, NECEC led a delegation of clean energy business leaders at the COP21 Climate Change Conference in Paris.
• In June 2017, NECEC spoke out when the U.S. pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord and offered a perspective on how the Northeast can lead the country despite the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement.
• In June 2018, NECEC championed the many Northeast businesses, cities, and states who joined the We Are Still In declaration and pledged to uphold the Paris Climate Agreement regardless of President Trump’s removal of the U.S.

With U.S. climate leadership reaffirmed, we look forward to building on our recent work to join with advocates, policy makers, companies, and thought leaders on the frontline of fighting climate change, scaling clean economy solutions, and coming together to inspire climate action ahead of COP26 in November 2021.

President Biden has opened the door for partnerships across regions and borders, and NECEC will seize this opportunity through our 2020s Decade of Action initiative to build a global partner network to share best practices and help scale the clean economy transition. We pledge to strengthen this important work and take meaningful climate action to scale our impact over the next 10 years by using this global clean economy best practices network to share climate and clean energy solutions. We’ll advocate for the policies and innovations needed to help the Northeast states reach their targets of lowering greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by at least 45% to 50% from 1990 levels by the end of this decade, and achieving economy-wide net zero GHG emissions by 2050. We’ll drive initiatives that accelerate sectors like clean transportation, offshore wind, a modernized grid, electrified buildings, flexible distributed energy, and much more. And we’ll prove which clean economy business models and market structures work in the Northeast, and show that they can scale for success across the globe.

There is hard work ahead for all of us, and after years of federal leadership absence, we must make up for lost time. Today, we are on the road to a better, more resilient, and more inclusive clean energy future.