The next Trump presidency could alter global climate policy. Here's how

U.S. carbon emissions could jump and the energy transition could take a major hit if a second Trump administration rolls back President Joe Biden's climate policies, a new analysis shows.

It would also have global reverberations at a time when the world teeters on the edge of a key warming threshold.

Research by Energy Innovation, a climate policy think-tank based in San Francisco, said emissions in the U.S. could be 1.7 gigatonnes higher in 2030 under Trump. Meanwhile, stopping the investments made under Biden could result in 1.7 million fewer jobs in 2030.

"I think what is important now is for any administration coming in ... to realize that we've reached a point where lots of clean energy is just good for lots of bottom lines," said Anand Gopal, executive director of policy research at Energy Innovation. "Abandoning it or walking away from it for ideological reasons is not necessarily the best thing to do."

But that's what Trump has indicated he will do. He has called Biden's climate policies a "green new scam," promised to "drill, baby, drill" for oil, called international climate negotiations a "rip-off of the United States" and repeatedly questioned the scientific consensus behind human-caused climate change.

During his previous administration, Trump withdrew rules to regulate emissions from automobiles, oil and gas facilities and power plants. He also withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Accord, which aimed to keep warming below 2 C from pre-industrial levels, and ideally below 1.5 C. 

"It's a discouraging day to be a climate scientist," said Rob Jackson, a climate scientist at Stanford University in California, referring to the incoming U.S. administration, and news that 2024 is almost certain to be the hottest year on record and the first year to be 1.5 C warmer than pre-industrial averages.

"It's an amazingly fast increase in global temperatures if we breach 1.5 C or even 1.55 C," he said. "It's not the same as being above 1.5 degrees long-term, but it's the start."

According to Energy Innovation's analysis, the Inflation Reduction Act and other Biden policies have generated $500 billion US in private investments in just two years. The landmark 2022 law has also created more than 330,000 new jobs in the U.S.

Gopal says it's because the legislation was designed to spur private investment and nudge companies to invest in clean technology over fossil fuels. He said that in just two years, 180 new clean energy projects have been started in the U.S. as a result, indicating how effective the investments have been.

"The biggest drivers have been in batteries and electric vehicles, but also lots of investments have gone into solar module manufacturing, and that's still growing," Gopal said.

"Most of the provisions in the IRA are preferentially giving tax credits if you decide to manufacture clean technology in the U.S. and if you decide to deploy that clean technology in the U.S."

If the Biden plan had continued to scale up over the next few years, there could've been 2.2 million additional jobs in 2030, according to Gopal's analysis.

Trump's 2024 campaign promises mirror what he tried to do during his first presidency, when he withdrew the U.S. from international climate negotiations and cancelled many environmental rules brought in by his predecessor, Barack Obama.