2/ A primer: The industrial sector is one of the toughest unsolved climate problems. It is responsible for as much as 40% of global emissions from energy, the IEA says. Concrete-making alone is 5-10% of global emissions.

3/ In the US, industry is ~23% of all emissions.

Unlike with electricity (where we have renewables, nuclear, and transmission) or transportation (where we have mass transit & EVs), humanity lacks scalable, commercializable tools to reduce CO₂ emissions from heavy industry.

4/ The new Biden plan aims to develop the technologies, companies, and communities that will solve those problems & reduce industrial emissions in the US and around the world.

But *how* it aims to accomplish this goal is noteworthy.
theatlantic.com/science/archiv…

5/ What makes the plan different? Look at the $9.5 billion that it spends on hydrogen, which, if cheaper, could replace fossil fuels in many industrial processes.

Once, if the government wanted to bring down hydrogen’s cost, it would’ve funded early R&D.
theatlantic.com/science/archiv…

5/ Now, the government is taking another bet. It’s saying that know-how—tacit knowledge that emerges from engineers & workers solving problems together—will drive progress.

And it’s spending $8 billion to develop the factories where that can happen. theatlantic.com/science/archiv…

6/ Another $1 billion will go to reducing the cost of hydrogen electrolysis (harvesting hydrogen from H20).

Here too the Department of Energy has license to intervene & shore up any part of the value chain. It can act as investor, consumer, underwriter… theatlantic.com/science/archiv…

7/ …it can even act as yenta. The Department of Energy has unveiled an “H2 Matchmaker,” where lonely hydrogen producers can connect to hot hydrogen-using singles in their area: energy.gov/eere/fuelcells…

8/ More broadly, the government is also intervening on the demand side. Agencies can now act as “buyers of first resort” and purchase low-carbon concrete and asphalt for federal projects, which will help promising firms find an early market for their work: theatlantic.com/science/archiv…

@yayitsrob Buy Clean is great!

Demand-side industrial policy actually go way further back than the semi-conductors and solar panels that @yayitsrob cites. Alexander Hamilton recommended it in his _Report on the Subject of Manufactures_ in 1791! (He called it 'bounties' for some reason.)

Rebecca Dell @rebeccawdell.bsky.social Yeah! I think you can even understand Hamilton & Friedrich List, with their AMCs and export discipline, as the more authentically American school of economics. Smith, Ricardo, even Keynes are operating in a much more Anglo tradition that has kind of dwarfed our home-grown school.

@yayitsrob Rebecca Dell @rebeccawdell.bsky.social Sweeping Ernest Ming-tak Leung 梁明德 article on how technocrats in each country have been learning from each other on how to join the Hockey Stick of Modern economic growth

US policymakers learning from East Asian developmentalist state is a 200 year old round trip!
phenomenalworld.org/analysis/devel…