Given more bipartisan recognition of climate change threats and the technological advancements in clean energy, energy industry observers expect former Vice President and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to pursue more progressive climate and energy policies if elected in November than those of the Obama administration.

Biden has even asked his transition team to explore the possibility of creating a new climate cabinet position, according to a pool report from a virtual fundraiser held earlier in April.

"I think the politics around climate have fundamentally changed from when President Obama was in office to now, and I think also the economic environment has fundamentally changed," said Sasha Mackler, director of the Energy Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center. "Those two factors are going to drive a much different political and policy agenda from a Biden presidency than we saw under President Obama, and I think it would be more ambitious."

While Biden took moderate stances on most policy issues during the primary he does not have a centrist policy on climate and energy issues, said Kevin Book, managing director of the independent research firm ClearView Energy Partners LLC. Biden has outlined policies to reduce fossil fuel production and market share, having pledged to halt new fossil fuel leasing on federal lands. However, he has stopped short of calling for a ban on hydraulic fracturing, which several other Democratic candidates proposed.

"I don't think anybody in Houston was watching the Biden campaign and saying, 'This is the guy who's going to help us,'" Book said. "His starting point is going to already be greener than the greenest of the Obama years."

Clean energy revolution

The former vice president's campaign released a fact sheet on Earth Day outlining nine key elements of his clean energy revolution plan. Among the proposals, he pledged to set "aggressive" limits on methane emissions for new and existing oil and gas operations, develop "rigorous" new vehicle fuel economy standards, and rejoin the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Within his first year of office, Biden plans to work with lawmakers to enact legislation that "puts us on an irreversible path to achieve economywide net-zero emissions no later than 2050," according to the April 22 fact sheet. If elected, his administration would invest $400 billion over 10 years as part of a plan to mobilize public investment in clean energy and innovation.

In addition, Biden plans to require public companies to disclose financial risks stemming from climate change and the greenhouse gas emissions produced by their operations and supply chains, according to the fact sheet.

The candidate also wants to pass legislation "requiring polluters to bear the full cost of their climate pollution," and to increase coal companies' contributions to miners' black lung benefits. For the communities affected by an energy transition, his administration would seek to help them access federal funding and leverage private sector investments to create high-paying union jobs.

Drawing parallels between the coronavirus pandemic and the climate crisis, Biden in an Earth Day release said both challenges "underscore the fragility of life on this planet ... and the responsibility we all have to meet these global threats with urgent action, ambitious plans, and every tool at our disposal."

"But out of this crisis, we can also seize a moment of unmatched opportunity — to build a new, clean-energy future that remakes our economy, creates millions of good jobs that provide an opportunity to join a union, and revolutionizes our approach to environmental justice," Biden said.

Even if he is elected president, many of Biden's legislative proposals will not be passed unless the Democrats also take control of the U.S. Senate in November, predicted Peter Van Doren, senior fellow with the Cato Institute and editor of the quarterly journal Regulation. Should Democrats take control of both chambers of Congress and the White House, he said, they also run the risk of overshooting on their policies, alienating voting blocs and threatening their chances in the midterm elections in 2022.

Despite the notion of a massive energy shift, Van Doren said the U.S. will continue using significant amounts of fossil fuels for the next several generations "because there are no easy substitutes." Natural gas is still the nation's leading generation source for electricity and the vast majority of vehicles in the U.S. still run on gasoline.

A clean energy transition will also depend on technological advancements, especially in battery storage, Van Doren asserted. For instance, he said if companies can develop $20,000 electric vehicles with a 300-mile range people will start buying them without government mandates.

Progressive support

Biden recently secured the endorsements of several climate-focused lawmakers, including former rival U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee.

Inslee, one of the Democratic Party's top environmental voices, reportedly offered his endorsement after several conversations with Biden over the importance of making a plan to address climate change central to the vice president's campaign.

While Biden appeals to many in the more moderate bloc of the Democratic Party, he is now seeking to drive support from the party's more progressive wing that rallied behind Sanders. Mackler said doing so may require him to toe a fine line between the progressive and moderate camps within the party.

"The climate movement and the clean energy movement generally is such a big part of the platform on the left," Mackler said. "Because of the various views of the different candidates in the Democratic primary on climate, I think that there was a sense of need on the part of the Biden campaign to start to reach out across the various campaigns and bring those coalitions together under his banner."

Book maintained that 2020 is a "bring-out-the-base year," and appealing to activists to boost progressive support could be important to overcoming a Republican advantage in the Electoral College during the upcoming election.

"If Biden comes out looking like a progressive on nonenergy issues," Book said, "I don't think he is going to lose very many Democrat votes being progressive on energy issues."

Impact on industry

Should Biden win in November, the fossil fuel industry could quickly face executive orders affecting their operations, Mackler predicted.

"There's a real challenge that the industry will face in the near-term, especially if the oil and gas sector continues to be in economic trouble in the fall, and if they need support from the government that could be a very politically challenging time for the industry," Mackler said. "The fossil fuel industry should really be thinking about how they can engage with an incoming Biden administration in a way that enables them to have a constructive seat at the table."

The fossil fuel industry might have better luck working with a Biden administration than some of his Democratic rivals, given his reputation in the Senate for trying to strike bipartisan deals, said Dallas Burtraw, senior fellow with research organization Resources for the Future.

"Substantively, he may not differ that far from the Bernie agenda, but the way that it gets implemented is going to be very different," Burtraw said. "I think that the [fossil fuel] industry probably finds it a lot more comforting that he would be a person at the helm making the decisions that we're going to launch this transformation rather than some of the other Democratic candidates who didn't have the same personal relationships and long-run perspective."