Today is the one-year anniversary of Joe Biden signing the Inflation Reduction Act into law, and there’s plenty of reason for the administration to take a victory lap. The IRA is the single biggest step the USA has ever taken to address climate change, and a recent analysis projects that it will cut America’s carbon dioxide emissions significantly,
by 33% to 40% by 2030, compared to a 2005 baseline. Before the IRA passed, the country was on track for reductions of just 25% to 31%, so the floor is now higher than the ceiling was prior to the legislation.
Another report, from the Rhodium Group, projects a wider possible range of reductions at either end, between 29 percent and 42 percent reduced greenhouse gases by 2030. Adding in the full suite of Biden climate policies that are “on the books as of June 2023,” Rhodium projects total emissions reductions of “32-51% below 2005 levels in 2035.”
To meet the goals of the Paris agreement — which Biden rejoined on his first day in office, after Donald Trump told the planet to take a flying fuck at the mooooon — we’ll have to do substantially more, which is just one of many reasons we have to reelect Biden and retake Congress. But today, let’s light a solar-powered LED candle to celebrate what as huge achievement the IRA is in getting us on the right track.
Shoulda Called It The ‘Climate And Healthcare Act’ Or Something
A year on, Biden is admitting that calling the bill the “Inflation Reduction Act” may have been a mistake. It was a useful short-term choice last summer, when worries about inflation seemed like a top issue for the fall midterms, but Biden said at a recent fundraiser in Utah, “I wish I hadn’t called it that because it has less to do with reducing inflation than it has to do with providing alternatives that generate economic growth,” like the climate provisions and the healthcare reforms.
Hilariously, Fox News cited that as an “admission” that the bill was worthless, when it was more an admission that the messaging around the bill should have focused on climate, jobs, and healthcare.
And unfortunately, polling suggests that lots of Americans don’t seem to be aware at all of what the IRA is doing; a recent Washington Post-University of Maryland poll found that while large majorities of Americans say they support many of the policies included in the IRA, like tax credits to encourage home solar and adoption of utility-grade wind and solar energy, only 27 percent of respondents said they knew “a great deal” or “a good amount” about the “Inflation Reduction Act” that actually includes those policies. Yikes!
Worse, despite the huge actions Biden has taken on climate, a large majority of Americans — 57 percent — say they disapprove of how Biden is handling climate change. (We assume that would also include some chunk of Republicans who are angry that he’s doing anything at all, although the survey didn’t ask follow-ups about whether respondents thought he was doing too much or too little.)
Where Are We Now, Where Are We Going?
In just its first year, the IRA has already sparked a hell of a lot of clean energy investments and jobs, sez Reuters, even before some of the law’s biggest incentives kick in in 2024 and 2025:
[There] have been more than 270 new clean energy projects announced since its passage, with investments totaling some $132 billion, according to a Bank of America analyst report.
Roughly half of those investment dollars are going to electric vehicles and batteries, while the rest are going to renewable energy like solar, wind and nuclear. These investments are expected to be accompanied by over 86,000 jobs, including 50,000 jobs related to EVs.
In a report on Tuesday, Moody’s said the legislation is likely supporting growth in gross domestic product, productivity and innovation.
“Over the past year, there have been signs that the legislation is contributing to a surge in clean energy manufacturing and related industries such as semiconductors, and factoring into companies’ investment decisions, including in the auto, utilities and oil and gas sectors,” Moody’s said.
Another report cited in a White House fact sheet set the number of clean energy jobs created by the IRA in its first year at 170,000. The total projected jobs that’ll be created over the 10 years of the IRA should be around 1.5 million.
The biggest impacts are yet to come, as the IRA’s incentives and loans in clean energy will speed up the transition away from fossil fuels. And since there’s no cap on the tax incentives for clean energy — both consumer stuff, like incentives to install heat pumps, home solar, etc., and for industrial development of clean energy manufacturing and the like — the total investment is likely to dwarf the $400 billion commonly touted when the bill was passed. Goldman Sachs estimated in April the total federal outlay by 2032 will be closer to $1.2 trillion, which of course makes deficit hawks mad, but that ignores Goldman’s forecast of economic activity that’ll ripple through the economy as a result:
The IRA includes incentives that make most clean tech — solar, wind, electric vehicles (EVs), and storage, as well as bio-energy, clean hydrogen, and carbon capture — profitable at large scale. Goldman Sachs Research estimates that the IRA’s impact could encourage $11 trillion of total infrastructure investments by 2050. By 2032, our analysts estimate there will be $2.9 trillion of cumulative investment opportunity across sectors for the re-invention of U.S. energy system, or on average $290 billion annually.
So yeah, that’s worth a victory lap!
Healthcare Savings
Also too, let’s not forget the other big achievement in the IRA, its multiple provisions to improve American healthcare, some of which went into place immediately, like capping Medicare copays for insulin at $35 a month. (Never forget, though, that Republicans shot down a provision to cap insulin prices for everyone.) Within a few months of the IRA’s passage, multiple major drug manufacturers capped prices on several of their popular insulin products too, for people with and without private health insurance. On top of that, the IRA extended for three years the American Rescue Plan’s premium reductions for Obamacare health insurance, resulting in an average premium savings of $2400 annually for 13 million Americans.
Other IRA provisions on healthcare will be rolled out in the next few years. Let’s review!
2025: Medicare Part D beneficiaries will have their out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs capped at $2,000 a year.
2026: Medicare’s first negotiated price reductions on the 10 most expensive prescription drugs will go into effect.
2027 to 2030: each year, more negotiated drug prices will go into effect, so that by 203 more than 80 prescription drugs will be subject to negotiation.
See the full list of IRA healthcare provisions here; it’s pretty damned impressive!
President Biden will be speaking about the first year of the IRA at 2:30 Eastern; here’s the White House video feed:
[Canary Media / Rhodium Group / WaPo / Reuters / White House / Goldman Sachs / Protect Our Care]
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MTG just said that Fani Willis should be going after rapists.
That.may not be exactly the best complaint about any case involving Trump.
OT:
Big wheel keep on turnin'
Proud Trumpy keep on burnin'...
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