On Wednesday, the Biden Administration’s Department of Energy (DOE) announced a new plan for a $6.3 billion decarbonization fund that will only be available to companies that first submit a pledge to “diversity.”
According to the Daily Caller, companies can only apply for funding from the Industrial Demonstrations Program (IDP) after they submit a “Community Benefits Plan.” The plan must outline each individual company’s dedication to four policy goals of the administration: Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); investment in America’s workforce; engaging communities and labor; and implementing aspects of a plan called “Justice 40,” which pledges to spend at least 40 percent of federal spending projects focusing on minority communities that are allegedly disproportionately impacted by “pollution.”
The IDP focuses on “decarbonization technologies” in the industrial sector, including the use of such materials as iron, steel, concrete, cement, and aluminum, among others. The program will be primarily funded by the controversial Inflation Reduction Act, a massive spending bill that, despite its name, focuses less on inflation and instead prioritizes spending on “green energy” and other initiatives to fight so-called “global warming.”
“It’s an opportunity, really, to accelerate transformational projects for the industrial sector taking concepts that might have required decades, plural decades, to prove out and scale, and shrinking that timeline down to this decade,” said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm when announcing the implementation of the IDP. “It’s an important chance to make progress on our climate goals, especially slashing pollution from a sector that contributes roughly a third of the country’s carbon emission.”
The program is just the latest effort by the Biden Administration to implement a widely-ridiculed plan that aims to make the United States “carbon-free” by 2050. Granholm nevertheless claimed that the initiative will also help the U.S. maintain a “competitive edge” and its “ability to build and lead new markets.”