The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) – widely regarded as the most significant climate legislation passed by Congress – was signed into law just over one year ago. But what impact and progress has the legislation made towards its objectives of spurring investment in clean energy to reduce carbon emissions?
As it enters its second year, the White House’s Senior Advisor for Clean Energy Innovation and Implementation said the administration is working to resolve the IRA’s key challenges – including beefing up the workforce and updating old IT systems.
“The first challenge … is permitting,” John Podesta said today during a Brookings Institute event. “In order to reach the Biden-Harris administration’s goal of 100 percent clean electricity by 2035, we need to deploy high performance transmission lines at twice the current pace. We need to build out 60 percent additional capacity. To achieve that, President Biden has elevated the permitting issued to the highest levels of government for the first time.”
“Our administration is using every tool at our disposal to accelerate and improve the Federal permitting process. We are investing a billion dollars from the Inflation Reduction Act to increase capacity at key Federal permitting agencies to add the personnel and the information technology to move this process forward,” Podesta added.
The IRA was signed into law on Aug. 16, 2022. A slimmed-down version of Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan, the legislation injects nearly $370 billion into climate and energy programs with the goal of reducing carbon emissions by about 40 percent by 2030.
“This legislation at its core,” Podesta said, “is government enabled, but its private sector led.”
Partnership between the government and industry is going to be key in resolving another critical challenge in implementing the IRA: workforce.
“External groups estimate that the Inflation Reduction Act has already created over 107,000 clean energy jobs just in the past year alone and could create more than 1.5 million jobs over the next decade,” Podesta explained. “President Biden and Vice President Harris want these jobs to be good paying jobs.”
Podesta said a “game changer” for the workforce has been providing energy tax credits for companies that pay their workers prevailing wages and use registered apprenticeships on projects.
Additionally, last month the White House launched the American Climate Corps – a workforce training and service initiative to help more than 20,000 young people gain the skills they need to launch good paying careers in clean energy and climate resilience.
“We have to seize this opportunity to lead on industries of the future,” Podesta said. “We have to create that virtuous cycle of innovation that’s going to drive down cost, deploy at scale, go faster every year.”
“To do that, we need experts to provide more research, data, and best practices on emerging technologies and we need allied governments and the private sector to work together,” he concluded. “It’s a big task, but our administration, I believe, is up to the challenge, and we all must be if we’re going to build a safe, sustainable, and secure future for ourselves and for the planet.”
