U.S. President Joe Biden will travel Wednesday to a shuttered coal-fired power plant that is now part of an offshore wind project in Massachusetts, where he is expected to deliver remarks on clean energy as his administration scrambles to salvage its climate agenda.
Biden will not declare a national climate emergency, the White House confirmed, disappointing Democratic lawmakers and activists who had called on Biden to take the step, which would have given him the ability to halt new federal oil drilling and ramp up wind, solar and other clean energy projects.
The president is under great pressure to take decisive action. His administration has spent the past year and a half trying to pass robust climate change legislation, only to see it collapse last week because it failed to win support from Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the swing Democratic vote in the evenly divided Senate.