Incoming US President Joe Biden looks set to pick Jennifer Granholm as his energy secretary, placing a long-time supporter of renewables at the heart of American policymaking, and Gina McCarthy to oversee climate policy across the federal government.

Granholm, who served two terms as governor of Michigan until 2011, will be the president-elect’s nomination according to multiple US media outlets including the Washington Post and New York Times, citing sources close to the matter.

The 61-year-old – who describes herself as “an advocate for clean energy” in her social media profiles – would be only the second female energy secretary if confirmed to a post with which she was linked several times under the Obama administration.

Granholm was a strong advocate of renewables – at that stage far less established in the US energy mix than they are now – during her time as Michigan governor.

Granholm subsequently became a professor of energy and public policy at UC Berkeley and has been a strong supporter of the energy transition of the US auto sector.

Although US states set renewable energy goals, the Department of Energy wields significant influence at federal level, for example by directing R&D backing for emerging technologies through R&D programmes.

If her nomination is confirmed Granholm would replace Dan Brouillette, the incumbent energy secretary under the Donald Trump administration.

McCarthy in new climate policy role

McCarthy will head a newly created White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy and work closely with John Kerry, the former secretary of state that Biden named as his special envoy for climate change. Neither position requires US Senate confirmation. She presently leads the National Resources Defense Council, a leading national environmental group.

Like Kerry, McCarthy, as an Environmental Protection Agency administrator from 2013 to 2017 played a key role in helping former US President Barack Obama devise climate policies during his second term and enforce executive branch actions aimed at reducing carbon pollution from electric power plants.

She was the architect of the controversial 2015 Clean Power Plan that assigned each state an individual goal for reducing CO2 emissions, which could be achieved either through their actions or through EPA enforcement if a state declined to submit a plan.

If every state met its target, the plan was projected to cut emissions from electricity generation 32% by 2030 from 2005 levels. Attacked by fossil fuel interests and President Donald Trump, his administration repealed the Clean Power Plan and replaced it with a much weaker EPA rule.

In her new role, McCarthy will coordinate actions in all executive branch agencies and departments that address climate change outside of the EPA and Department of Energy. These could include financial regulation, transportation funding and other infrastructure policy, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Biden has pledged to adopt a radically different energy and climate agenda to Trump’s, taking the US back into the Paris Agreement and turbocharging clean energy development, including installation of “thousands of turbines” offshore during his first term.