(Bloomberg) -- The surge of US oil and gas output under the Biden administration is an enabler of the energy transition, not a black mark on the country’s climate progress, a top White House adviser said Wednesday.
The administration’s approach to the shift has been to ensure there is “energy availability for the demand that exists on the market today — no shocks, no upward price pressure,” Ali Zaidi, the White House national climate adviser, told Bloomberg TV at the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan. “That is a facilitator of decarbonization, not something that slows it down.”
Outgoing President Joe Biden has prioritized spending and policy to help propel a shift to low- and zero-emission energy sources, driving record investment to the sector. But at the same time, US oil and gas production has climbed to record levels, surpassing Saudi Arabia and other energy-rich nations to lead the world in crude production.
Zaidi suggested that’s not a record to run from, even at the UN climate talks, a year after nations committed to transition away from fossil fuels.
“It doesn’t matter what your energy mix is today; we can all travel the distance and get there and keep 1.5 degrees within reach,” he said.
Zaidi and other US officials are working to reassure foreign leaders that the country’s long-term climate progress will not be shaken, despite President-elect Donald Trump’s vows to once again withdraw the country from the Paris Agreement and roll back regulations critical to meeting the nation’s carbon-cutting commitments.
Zaidi argued that a building political economy around clean energy investment in the US will help ensure the durability of the country’s transition, insisting there’s an “irreversibility of our momentum here.”
That trajectory has been shaped by a trillion dollars of private investment and capital intensive projects being built across the country, he said. “There is a singular focus in the private sector, in labor and industry, to seize this opportunity, and the US is going to keep rushing to do that.”