President Joe Biden has pledged the “largest effort to combat climate change in US history” as he unveiled ambitious budget plans shortly before leaving for Europe on a whistle-stop tour ahead of the COP26 summit.

Hundreds of billions of dollars are set to be funnelled into supporting clean energy, electric vehicles and new defences against extreme weather events, according to details of a spending bill.

The proposed framework, a pared back version of the administration’s Build Back Better plans, includes $555 billion (£402 billion) in incentives, investments and tax credits aimed at bolstering the deployment of renewable energy such as solar and wind, as well as a tax break that will deliver up to $12,500 (£9,063) to people who buy an electric car.

The bill will help deploy new electric buses and trucks, build community resilience to disastrous wildfires and floods, and employ 300,000 people in a new “civilian climate corps”. The White House said the legislation would cut planet-heating emissions by one billion tons by 2030 and bring the US significantly closer to its goal of slashing carbon pollution in half this decade.

At a press conference, Mr Biden said the bill would represent “the most significant investment to address the climate crisis ever” and “will truly transform this nation”.

READ MORE: Sturgeon to address young climate activists ahead of summit

“We are going to get off the sidelines of manufacturing solar panels and wind farms,” the president said, adding that the package will help double the number of electric cars on US roads within three years and provide 500,000 new charging stations for vehicles. We are once again going to be the innovators. It’s a big deal."

Mr Biden continued: “The weather is not going to get better, it’s going to get a heck of a lot worse. It’s a blinking code red for America and the world.”

However, some key parts of his original plan were left out. While the bill is the largest commitment to clean energy that the US has ever seen, the plans lack concrete effort to reduce the use of fossil fuels. This is partly due to objections from two key centrist Democratic senators, Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, the former with deep ties to the coal industry, whose votes are crucial to the bill’s success.

READ MORE: ScotRail reveal new timetable for COP26

Mr Biden, who is heading for Rome before crucial UN climate talks begin in Glasgow next week, has said it would be “very, very positive” for the reconciliation bill to pass before the Cop26 summit, in order to help convince other countries to do more to address the climate crisis.

It comes after China submitted a new national plan for climate action to the UN which does not increase its existing targets.

Earlier this week, the UN warned that the latest national action plans submitted by countries under the global climate treaty the Paris Agreement for action up to 2030 put the world on track for a “catastrophic” 2.7C of warming.

China has not included new targets beyond those already announced. It aims to reach carbon neutrality before 2060 and peak emissions before 2030, and lower carbon emissions per unit of GDP by over 65 per cent from the 2005 level.