The Arctic is currently experiencing destabilizing on-the-ground effects, including sea ice melt and sea level rise the loss of food access and food sources and infrastructure damage and loss due to permafrost thaw and coastal erosion. With temperatures rising in Arctic Alaska at three times the rate of the rest of the planet, the effects of climate change are already dire for Arctic communities. A CAP analysis finds that the carbon emissions expected from Willow would negate the estimated 129 MMT of carbon emissions avoided by reaching the president’s goals of deploying 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind energy by 2030 and permitting 25 GW of solar, onshore wind, and geothermal energy on public lands by 2025.* Put another way, allowing the Willow project to proceed would result in double the carbon pollution that all renewable progress on public lands and waters would save by 2030. To further put this potential carbon disaster into context, the Willow project would essentially erase the forward progress on renewable energy that President Biden has promised on public lands and waters by 2030. Burning its oil would produce more than 260 million metric tons (MMT) of carbon dioxide-equal to the annual output of nearly one-third of U.S.
The proposal for development would pump more than 500 million barrels of oil from a fragile and rapidly warming ecosystem over the next 30 years. The court found that the review contained inaccurate and inadequate analysis of climate impacts-the same legal basis that saw a recent Gulf of Mexico lease sale overturned -along with major flaws in the consideration of effects on polar bears and of less harmful plan alternatives. Initially defended in court by the current administration, a federal judge in Alaska rightfully struck down the Trump administration’s approval of the project, citing “serious errors” with the environmental review. The Willow project was originally approved after being rushed through in the final months of the Trump administration. ConocoPhilips’ Willow oil drilling project is estimated to extract more than 160,000 barrels of oil per day for the next 30 years, which a Center for American Progress analysis finds would dwarf the greenhouse gas emissions avoided by fulfilling President Joe Biden’s 2030 commitments on renewables on public lands and waters. To get there, the administration has taken a whole-of-government approach, including pledging to vastly expand renewable energy development on public lands and waters.īut a single oil lease in the Alaskan Arctic threatens to negate all of that promised progress on renewables.
The Biden administration has set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50 percent by 2030-the most ambitious climate goal of any U.S.
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