New legislative initiatives geared toward the energy transition are beginning to reshape economic activity in different countries, and will be a major topic in New York during this week's United Nations General Assembly debate.
Three years after President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) unleashed billions of dollars in green energy and infrastructure investments, global leaders are weighing whether the energy transition will be marked by competition or cooperation.
Multiple leaders stressed on Tuesday morning the fluctuating dynamics in global power politics accompanying the transformations in economic dynamics, with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva remarking on the “dizzying changes in the international panorama” and President Biden describing no less than “an inflection point in world history.”
“Our task is to make sure that the forces holding us together are stronger than those that are pulling us apart, that the principles of partnerships that we come here each year to uphold can withstand the challenges, that the center holds once again,” Biden said.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that “epic transformations” were underway and cautioned that “the current order always feels fixed – until it is not.”
“Instability around the world is a by-product of instability in power relations and geopolitical divides,” he remarked, referring to multiple regional conflicts and global hotspots.
Biden’s IRA has been matched with parallel initiatives in power centers across the globe, including Europe’s Green Deal and various development and financing projects from China. Europe’s answer to the roughly $800 billion IRA was the $750 billion Green Deal passed........