As Joe Biden takes office as president, expectations are running high for him to deliver on his pledge to achieve social equity gains and progress toward net-zero emissions by 2050. If Democrats win the Georgia runoff elections, that would boost Biden’s opportunities legislatively, but even if Republicans retain Senate control, the new administration can make a lot of difference through the Clean Air Act and other means.

For starters, the Biden administration will be “a 180 degree turn from the climate rollback and denial” that President Trump has pushed for four years, says David Doniger, senior strategic director for climate and clean energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Having campaigned on an ambitious climate and racial justice platform, Biden can accomplish a lot using existing law, Doniger says, citing tighter CAA Section 111 standards for both new and existing power plants as offering “a very viable route” for the United States to set on the path toward net zero emissions for the power sector by 2035.

In his campaign, Biden called for a “Clean Energy Revolution” and declared that on day one he’ll sign new executive orders that will “go well beyond” President Obama’s executive actions. Central to those efforts was EPA’s 2015 Clean Power Plan that the Trump EPA repealed. But now, state climate policies and market forces disfavoring coal and accelerating clean energy have overtaken that plan. An NRDC analysis showed that strengthening instead of scrapping the CPP could cut carbon emissions 60 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, almost double the CPP’s 32 percent reductions, and do so more cheaply, Doniger says.

CAA regulation, however, “is probably not the device you’d use to get all the way there” to net zero, Doniger adds. Clean energy tax incentives, research and development, and other measures to deploy such technologies will be important components of Biden’s environmental and related equity goals, and lawmaking will be needed to get all the way there. However, must-pass legislation directed at pandemic recovery and infrastructure can contribute to Biden’s environmental agenda. And although broad, strong statutes aimed at today’s environmental problems would be more effective and make progress easier, Doniger says that “a lot can be done even without dedicated climate legislation.”

Many observers point to the potential for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to play a significant decarbonizing role. That point was highlighted by a proposed policy FERC floated October 15 asserting that the commission has jurisdiction over wholesale electricity market rules incorporating state-determined carbon prices, a policy that likely prompted the Trump White House to replace FERC Chair Neal Chatterjee.

Devashree Saha, a senior associate at the World Resources Institute, comments that Biden is likely to push for reforms at FERC to further integrate distributed energy resources like rooftop solar and storage. But legislation might be necessary, Saha says, as called for in the House Climate Crisis Committee’s June report. The report calls on Congress to direct FERC to implement rules necessary to achieve 100 percent net-zero electricity generation by no later than 2040, among other FERC-related conclusions.

Likewise, NRDC’s John Moore, director of the Sustainable FERC Project, says that under Obama’s CPP the commission played a really significant implementation and compliance role, with FERC serving as a regulator of regional markets that would have helped ensure efficient compliance with the rule. Presumably FERC would do the same with an updated CPP. More broadly, if Congress enacts new clean energy legislation, “I can easily imagine FERC and regional markets playing a role to help implement a carbon-based standard more efficiently,” Moore says.

Both Republicans and Democrats support a clean energy standard that includes any non-emitting sources, such as nuclear and carbon capture technologies, Saha and others note, so legislation might be possible even with a GOP-led Senate. Congress could push FERC toward adopting more assertive transmission policies, Moore says, because it is clear that transmission developed over the last decade has not been of the type needed to decarbonize the grid or the transportation and building sectors.

But, while FERC in the last few years has embraced more forward-looking policies, issuing orders that have for example enabled greater access for wind and solar, the commission “hasn’t caught up with the times” in its overall market design, Moore says. FERC’s market design framework hasn’t evolved enough to meet state clean energy policies “with teeth in them,” he says.

As Biden takes office and promises to put teeth in his climate policies, it remains to be seen how much he can accomplish. But at least he’ll be moving forward, not backwards.