By Jennifer Wilson Pines

The newly passed Inflation Reduction Act has $369 billion dedicated to energy security and climate change. Many of these provisions will significantly improve our ability to reduce the impact of Climate Change.
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The good news

For consumers there are some direct benefits from tax credits and rebates for going electric, including a 30% tax credit for installing residential solar panels, up to $7,500 for purchasing an electric vehicle, and up to $14,000 for home energy efficiency upgrades, including up to $8,000 to install a heat pump.

Taking advantage of these could help families save significantly on energy bills.
Some $28.8 billion will go directly to states, municipalities, and tribal governments to assist in a wide range of uses.

This includes rebates to help consumers make energy-efficienct upgrades to their homes, a green bank to help governments place clean-energy technologies and cut emissions in underserved communities, funds for governments to develop and implement plans to curb emissions, monies for state and private forestry conservation programs to promote natural carbon sequestration, including by planting trees.

It also includes a $1 billion incentive for governments to adopt more energy-efficient building codes and $5 million for states to adopt more stringent emissions standards for cars and light trucks. It is hoped that states will leverage this funding to stretch the impact.
There are provisions for environmental justice for communities of color and low-income communities that face disproportionate injury from pollution and climate change.

The bill will provide $315.5 million for air monitoring so that communities know what’s in the air, with specific funds for schools and residents near polluting industries. Another $3 billion is earmarked for community-led projects.

The bill will also provide funding for low-income families to electrify their homes, including $9 billion in home energy rebate programs. It will remove barriers to community solar, where costs and benefits can be shared among homeowners, businesses and not for profit organizations.

A total of $1 billion is designated for clean school and transit buses, garbage trucks, and other heavy-duty vehicles, prioritizing communities most impacted by air pollution. Finally, the Superfund Tax is reinstated so that industry foots the bill for cleaning up their pollution.

The bill recognizes that nature has some of the best solutions for fighting climate change with the oceans and landscape sequestering carbon, providing shelter for species facing climate extinction, and sustaining and protecting communities. The bill includes protections for mature and old-growth forests and funding to implement endangered species recovery plans and address climate change impacts on key habitats.

There is $2.6 billion in coastal resilience grants to fund projects to protect and restore coastal communities and ecosystems. Funding for the National Environmental Policy Act reviews and public engagement on projects using federal funds or on federal lands will ensure proper process and access for impacted communities.

There is robust funding for conservation measures in agriculture which will help farmers pay for cover crops and buffer strips to control erosion, and hedgerow habitats for bees and other insects.

A large portion goes to cleaning up air pollution and emissions with $3 billion to clean up air pollution at ports by installing zero emissions equipment.

The $260 billion in new and extended clean-energy tax credits will encourage energy companies and public utilities to produce more solar, wind and hydropower energy, along with increasing energy security and creating jobs by investing $60 billion in manufacturing solar panels, batteries, and other clean energy technologies. Some $3 billion will go to the U.S. Postal Service to electrify its huge fleet of more than 200,000 vehicles.

The bad news

To get Joe “I sold my soul to coal” Manchin’s vote, some less than environmental provisions were added. It allows for oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s Cook Inlet, and tradeoffs in oil and gas leasing for solar and wind project approvals.

Some tax credits could extend the life of pollution-spewing coal plants, which will continue to impact everyone living downwind and the atmosphere for additional decades. There are pipeline subsidies and a move to a possible weakening of the National Environmental Policy Act, the federal law that gives communities a voice in what happens to their environment. There is concern that these provisions will negate some of the attempts to rectify past and ongoing impacts on underserved communities.

As a total package the act, if managed properly, has the potential to bring the United States closer to the goals of the Paris Accord, and the immediate goals of reducing illness and death from pollution, protecting the coastlines from sea level rise, protecting and restoring the land, reducing energy costs, and making the U.S. more energy secure and independent.