The United States is open to possible “adjustments” to its massive climate plan to reassure Europeans who fear that their businesses will flee across the Atlantic, said Saturday on the BBC John Kerry, the United States’ special envoy. on climate change.
“I don’t think (the Inflation Reduction Act, IRA) will be watered down,” Kerry told the BBC. “But looking at where it may be appropriate to make changes or adjustments that are fair, without detriment to our own efforts? I’m confident that President Biden would be willing to think about that.”
The European Union has been worried for several months about the effects of the IRA, US President Joe Biden’s US$420 billion plan largely devoted to the climate and adopted last summer.
This plan provides, among other things, for reforms and subsidies favoring companies established in the United States, particularly in the electric vehicle or renewable energy sectors, which worries the European Union, which is calling for more “coordination” and fears a leak of its businesses across the Atlantic.
The issue was at the heart of French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent state visit to Washington.
On the BBC, John Kerry also spoke about the controversial underground coal mine project authorized this week in the United Kingdom, the first project of this type in thirty years in the country.
“Obviously people are going to be critical because the general idea is that any coal mine is going in the opposite direction of what most people are asking for,” he said. said about this project in the county of Cumbria (north-west of England).
If he said he wanted to understand the project before commenting on it, he warned against the image that such a plan sent internationally.
“If you go all over the world telling people to leave their coal underground, it’s hypocritical if at the same time you announce that you’re opening a new mine in a country like the UK,” he said. valued.