52 Time April 25/May 2, 2022
the airline’s CEO, told me about the coalition—
including companies like Deloitte, HP, and
Microsoft—that he is forming to help bring the fuel
to market. “This is not just about United Airlines;
this is about building a new industry,” Kirby told me.
“To do that, we’ve got to have a lot of airlines partic-
ipate, we’ve got to have partners participate... and
we’ve got to have government participate.” Kirby
had chosen Washington as the destination for this
flight for a reason: to truly deploy the technology
would require some help from the U.S. government.
The Biden Administration has been eager to
serve as a partner, proposing a tax credit for sus-
tainable aviation fuel—and aviation is just the tip
of the iceberg. The Administration has sought
to partner on climate with companies across the
country and across industries. “That’s him avail-
ing every tool he’s got,” says Ali Zaidi, Biden’s dep-
uty national climate adviser, of the President’s
private- sector engagement.
That approach is also based in a sense of real-
ism: the technologies we need to cut emissions
over the next decade exist today, and any reason-
able consideration of how the world can cut carbon
emissions means deploying those technologies as
quickly as possible—largely by getting companies
to adopt them. We need “to take the technologythat DOE has spent so many years working on and
actually get it in the hands of consumers,” says
Jigar Shah, who runs the department’s Loan Pro-
gram Office and has $40 billion to invest in prom-
ising companies and make that happen.
Last September, I watched in the back of the
room in Geneva as John Kerry, Biden’s special pres-
idential envoy for climate, pitched the Adminis-
tration’s approach to CEOs of some of the world’s
biggest companies, presenting more than 30 slides
detailing a new program to catalyze production
of clean technologies, in sectors ranging from air
travel to steel manufacturing. Instead of govern-
ment mandates, Kerry proposed that companies
themselves take the lead by making deals to pur-
chase clean technology.
The truth is that in 2022, Big Business has the
power to influence—and halt—basically anything
the government does. “I am convinced, unless the
private sector buys into this, there won’t be a suf-
ficient public-sector path created, because the pri-
vate sector has the power to prevent that,” Kerry
told me in September. “The private sector has
enormous power. And our tax code reflects that
in this country. And what we need is our environ-
mental policy to reflect the reality.”
It makes sense then that from the outset, the
Biden Administration’s climate-spending plan—
dubbed Build Back Better—has focused primarily
on carrots rather than sticks. That is, it included a
laundry list of rewards for companies doing posi-
tive things—namely tax credits for clean energy
and subsidies for technologies like electric vehi-
cles. Still, the most influential trade groups that
lobby in Washington on behalf of big businesses
refused to back the overall legislation—because it
required an increase in corporate taxes.
In the coming weeks, as negotiations for a re-
vamped climate-spending bill accelerate, busi-
nesses will have another chance to show they are
serious about climate policy. It brings to mind a
key moment in a panel I moderated in April last
year with Granholm and a handful of top corpo-
rate executives working to reduce their companies’
emissions. “There are a lot of members of Con-
gress that could learn from your words. And it’s not
to get political, but sometimes folks just need to
hear,” she told them. “To the extent you can, we’d
be really grateful, because we feel like our hair is
on fire.” They still can help, but the clock is ticking.EvEn bEforE JoE bidEn took office, the American
auto industry had begun to adopt the President -
elect’s ambition of a rapid transition to electric ve-
hicles. Within weeks of the election, GM dropped
a lawsuit that sought to block more stringent
fuel- economy standards. Two months later, it said
it would go all electric by 2035. Meanwhile, Biden△
Greenpeace
activists protest
corporate
involvement at
the COP26 U.N.
climate talks in
November 2021