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Joe Biden has appointed his clean energy adviser John Podesta as the US’s top climate diplomat, moving swiftly to fill the vacancy despite a looming presidential election.
The appointment comes at a critical time for US climate and international energy policy, with allies concerned about the country’s commitment to global climate goals if Donald Trump wins the 2024 presidential election.
The White House said Podesta, who is currently in charge of rolling out clean energy subsidies and other parts of the Biden administration’s flagship Inflation Reduction Act, would continue in his current role alongside the additional duties of advising the president on international climate policy.
The move puts Podesta, 75, a veteran of the Bill Clinton and the Barack Obama administrations, at the heart of US international climate policy. He replaces John Kerry, who announced his plan to step down as the president’s climate envoy earlier this month.
Among Podesta’s other roles, he will be expected to oversee the US’s climate talks with China. Although co-operation between the world’s two largest polluters is critical to lowering global greenhouse gas emissions, broader geopolitical tensions have frequently obstructed climate progress in recent years.
Shortly before stopping down from the climate envoy role earlier this month, Kerry and his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua hammered out an agreement to back a tripling of renewable energy capacity globally by 2030, and to include a broader array of greenhouse gases — including methane — in their climate targets.
Podesta has been an aggressive advocate of the IRA, the landmark climate law passed by Congress in 2022, as a tool to reindustrialise parts of the US’s rust-belt that suffered during globalisation in recent decades. The act has drawn criticism from US allies which say it amounts to protectionism by the world’s biggest economy.
Podesta last year told the Financial Times the US would make “no apologies” for prioritising domestic jobs in its quest to win a global clean energy race against China and other competitors.
Podesta’s appointment comes amid anxiety from climate campaigners that US policy on climate could switch quickly again if Biden loses this year’s race to Trump.
The former president previously withdrew the US from the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement that pledges to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. Under Biden, who rejoined the Paris accord, the US has committed to lowering its emissions by 50 per cent to 52 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.
White House chief of staff Jeff Zients said Podesta would meet the “gravity of this moment”, and was “a leader who without a doubt the world will know has the trust of and speaks for the President of the United States”.
Manish Bapna, chief executive of the Natural Resources Defense Council, welcomed Podesta’s appointment, saying he was “one of the most respected public servants in Washington”.
“He knows the people, the politics and what must be done to confront the existential challenge of our time,” he said.
