Harris Councilman Deese Calls for Marshall Plan on Clean Energy Reuters

By Timothy Gardner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Brian Deese, an economic adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, on Thursday called for an economic loan program for allies to buy U.S. green energy technologies as part of a broader strategy to fight climate change climatic.

Deese, who served as an economic adviser under President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama, pitched it as a new version of the Marshall Plan, a grant mechanism established by President Harry Truman and Secretary of State George Marshall to help Europe to recover from the Second World War.

“He should be as generous to our allies as he is pro-American in his own interests,” Deese told Reuters.

While Deese is promoting the plan independently of his work as a Harris adviser, it could provide insight into the potential policies of her presidency should she win on Nov. 5. The Harris campaign did not immediately comment.

Deese helped craft the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s flagship legislation that contains billions of dollars to help boost clean energy and fight climate change. He said the IRA and other legislation created one of the biggest opportunities to accelerate clean energy, but the effort needs a mechanism to bring technologies to allies.

To support the plan, the U.S. should create a Clean Energy Finance Authority with the ability to issue debt and equity for clean energy projects, Deese said in a Foreign Affairs article published earlier this week. The plan could be part of an American alternative to China’s “Belt and Road” infrastructure initiative and could provide US leadership at a time of friction between global powers.

The new US agency could draw on the expertise of the Energy Department’s Office of Loan Programs to assess the risks and benefits of emerging technologies such as advanced nuclear power, hydrogen power, carbon capture and geothermal power, Deese said. The LPO issues loan guarantees and low-rate loans to companies with promising technologies that have difficulty obtaining financing from commercial banks.

To support the plan, Deese also called for tools such as tariffs that favor imports from countries that reduce emissions while producing steel and other products and the development of a strategic mineral reserve.

Such reserves would be held by the US and allies to protect against supply chain shortages for key cleantech materials and China’s dominance of trade in essential minerals.

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Deese helped set a record sale of oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help moderate gas prices for American drivers. That experience helped him see the importance of developing mineral reserves, he said.

“My hope is that we’ve gotten out of the idea stage and had an opportunity to experiment and then build,” Deese said.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a Reuters interview in June that the U.S. has had conversations with allies at the International Energy Agency about collective stockpiles of critical minerals.