Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just released her massive Green New Deal — here’s what’s in it via CNBC

• Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Edward Markey are introducing a resolution spelling out congressional support for a Green New Deal.
• The resolution largely sticks to a blueprint Ocasio-Cortez previously laid out but clarifies some of the broad goals of the deal.
• The central goal is for the U.S. to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

Tom DiChristopher

Freshman Congress member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and veteran lawmaker Sen. Edward Markey are introducing a resolution spelling out congressional support for a Green New Deal — an ambitious plan to remake the U.S. economy and drastically reduce the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The resolution largely sticks to a blueprint Ocasio-Cortez laid out when she proposed creating a House select committee to establish a Green New Deal. That framework called for generating 100 percent of the nation’s power from renewable sources, making all buildings energy efficient and eliminating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector and industry — all within about 10 years.

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Clarifying Green New Deal goals

The biggest update to the original Green New Deal blueprint is that Ocasio-Cortez is now calling for the U.S. to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Her previous proposal simply called for “eliminating” the emissions from the transportation, agriculture and industrial sectors.

Reaching net-zero emissions typically means the U.S. would still be emitting greenhouse gases, but it would not release more of them into the atmosphere than it can remove or store.

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Ocasio-Cortez also clarified that under the plan, the U.S. will not invest in new nuclear power plants, but existing generation stations would be allowed to continue operating at the end of the 10-year time frame. Nuclear power plants generate 20 percent of the nation’s electric power and 63 percent of its zero-carbon power.

“The goal is to use the expansion of renewable energy sources to fully meet 100% of our nation’s power demand through only renewable sources in 10 years, but since no one has yet created a full plan to hit that goal, we are currently unsure if we will be able to decommission every nuclear plant that fast,” Ocasio-Cortez’s office said in an FAQ.