The Inflation Reduction Act is stuffed with subsidies for everything from electric vehicles to heat pumps, and incentives for just about every form of clean energy. But pouring money into technology is just one step toward solving the climate change problem.
Wind and solar farms won’t be built without enough power lines to connect their electricity to customers. Captured carbon and clean hydrogen won’t get far without pipelines. Too few contractors are trained to install heat pumps. And EV buyers will think twice if there aren’t enough charging stations.
Surmounting these obstacles is the next step as the country figures out how to turn the goals of the most ambitious climate legislation Congress has ever passed into reality.
Two outcomes matter: how deeply U.S. actions slash emissions domestically, and how effectively they cut the costs of clean technologies so that other countries can slash their emissions too.
Various studies predict that the Inflation Reduction Act will cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to around 40% below their 2005 levels by 2030. But it still leaves a roughly 10 percentage-point gap from President Joe Biden’s target of at least a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030.
What will it take to close that gap?
The Inflation Reduction Act’s subsidies will make clean technologies cheaper, but the biggest need domestically is for more infrastructure and stricter environmental regulations.
For infrastructure, tax credits for electric cars will do little good without enough publicly available chargers.
Over 1,300 gigawatts of wind, solar and battery projects – several times the existing capacity – are already waiting to be built, but they’ve been delayed for years by a lack of grid connections and backlogged approval processes.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed by Congress last year provides some funding for chargers, power lines and pipelines, but not enough.
Even more important is to clear the regulatory obstacles to building clean energy infrastructure.
Democratic leaders of the Senate and House have pledged to pass legislation to make it easier to obtain permits for power lines and pipelines, but doing so would require bipartisan support. That remains in doubt.
State and local governments and regional grid operators also play pivotal roles in approving new infrastructure and clean energy projects. They must overcome not-in-my-backyard opposition to the power lines, pipelines and facilities that will be needed for clean energy, and simplify approval processes for rooftop solar panels.
It can’t all be carrots: Sticks are needed, too.
We’ll also need regulatory sticks to supplement the Inflation Reduction Act’s carrot cake buffet.
By tightening emissions limits for greenhouse gases and other air pollutants under its Clean Air Act authority, the Environmental Protection Agency can spur the closure of old power plants, require carbon capture at new ones and drive emissions reductions across industries.
Stricter emissions limits could force gasoline and diesel vehicles to become more efficient and accelerate the adoption of electric ones. Tougher reporting rules and better monitoring of methane leaks will be needed to back up the Inflation Reduction Act’s tax on methane emissions.
All the new spending has the potential to achieve deep emissions cuts domestically, but they will have little impact abroad without further action.
More progress abroad may be driven in future decades by the boosts in funding for emerging technologies. For example, the Inflation Reduction Act provides billions of dollars for clean hydrogen and carbon capture technologies that are not yet commercially viable but could become so with greater deployment. Carbon capture should be targeted toward locking up carbon from difficult-to-decarbonize industries such as biofuel production, rather than to prolong the use of coal power plants or subsidize oil and gas production.
The CHIPS and Science Act authorizes $67 billion in funding for zero-carbon industries and climate research, although subsequent legislation will be needed to ensure that those funds are actually appropriated.
It would double the budget for the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E program, which funds research into the most cutting-edge energy technologies. That could be especially important for making clean hydrogen cheap, making geothermal viable in more places, and developing new forms of energy storage. Together with the subsidies provided by the Inflation Reduction Act, that could jump-start the research, development and deployment needed to make these technologies affordable worldwide in the decades ahead.
Daniel Cohan is associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University. Distributed by The Associated Press.
