A new system of fees will be imposed to stem leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from oil and gas drilling operations. The bulk of the bill is composed of tax credits aimed at unleashing a boom in clean energy deployment, along with payments to keep ageing nuclear facilities and other sources of low-carbon energy online. It doesn’t mean the US won’t need to do more to achieve its emissions goals but it will make a meaningful difference.” “This is a dramatically large climate bill, the biggest in US history if it passes. “This bill will really turbocharge that transition to clean energy, it will transform markets where already solar PV, wind, and batteries are in many cases cheaper than incumbent fossil fuels,” said Anand Gopal, executive director of policy at Energy Innovation. The range of estimates depends on factors such as future economic conditions, but experts say the bill will set off a cascade of positive impacts, pushing fossil fuels out of the energy grid, dampening America’s thirst for oil, and making wind and solar, which have already plummeted in cost in recent years, even cheaper. In total, around 1 billion tons of greenhouse gases, which is more than double the total annual emissions of the UK, would be eliminated in this timeframe. A separate analysis by Energy Innovation, another research house, has found a similar reduction, of between 37 percent and 41 percent this decade. In sum, the bill will cut US emissions by between 31 percent and 44 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, according to Rhodium Group, a non-partisan research firm.
If Democrats are able to muster all 50 of their Senate votes for the bill, overcoming uniform Republican resistance to acting on the climate emergency, billions of dollars will go towards investments in renewable energy such as wind and solar, rebates for people wishing to buy electric cars and support for households to make them run on clean electricity and become more energy efficient. Biden said the bill was a “huge step forward”. Excruciating negotiations with Joe Manchin, the coal company-owning West Virginia senator and a swing vote for the bill, ended up in a reduced compromise.īut its heft can still, argued Brian Schatz, another Democratic senator, be considered “by far, the biggest climate action in human history”. The climate provisions in the legislation-totaling $369 billion, to be exact-are pared back from what Biden initially wanted. Overall, the IRA is a huge opportunity to tackle the climate crisis.” “This bill includes so much, it comprises nearly $370bn in climate and clean energy investments. “This is a massive turning point,” said Leah Stokes, a climate policy expert at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This cut would bring the US within striking distance of a goal set by Joe Biden to cut emissions in half by 2030, a target that scientists say must be achieved by the whole world if catastrophic global heating, triggering escalating heatwaves, droughts and floods, is to be avoided. Independent analysis of the proposed legislation, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, shows it should slash America’s planet-heating emissions by about 40 percent by the end of the decade, compared with 2005 levels. Experts say it will help rewire the American economy and act as an important step in averting disastrous global heating. The US is, following decades of political rancor and fossil fuel industry obfuscation, on the verge of its first significant attempt to tackle the climate crisis. This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration
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