Inflation Reduction Act Two Years Later: America’s Best Climate Action
In just two years, the Inflation Reduction Act has shown huge potential for combating climate change.
According to Forbes, President Biden’s signature climate achievement is giving Americans the choice to stop burning fossil fuels and cut their energy bills – all while kick-starting a domestic manufacturing boom, cleaning our air, and creating good jobs.
Federal policies like the IRA, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, CHIPS and Science Act, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards to cut air pollution from vehicles and power plants, have more than doubled America’s annual pace of emissions reductions this decade compared to the rate achieved in the 2010s.
IRA provisions are the catalyst of this clean energy transition, and they’ve helped put U.S. emissions on pace to fall 37% below 2005 levels, about halfway to our national climate targets of 50-52% emissions reductions by 2030, en-route to net-zero emissions by 2050.
But the IRA isn’t just an environmental success – it has recharged America’s economy by onshoring manufacturing, creating jobs, saving consumers money, and attracting billions in new investments.
Following The Money
Clean energy incentives in the IRA empower the U.S. to transition off fossil fuels through $369 billion in new spending for clean energy projects, which Goldman Sachs estimates will catalyze $2.9 trillion cumulative investment by 2032.
IRA investments are paying off. In the two years since it became law, clean energy investments have created more than 334,000 new jobs and enacted corporations have invested nearly $500 billion in clean energy, more than half of total private investment nationwide and 64% higher than total oil and gas investment.
