in the United States Senate announced they’d finally come to an agreement on a major climate bill, tucked inside the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. It would allocatetoward energy security and climate action, juice domestic manufacturing of clean energy technologies like wind and solar power, steel communities against climate change, and prepare American agriculture for extreme heat, among many other campaigns.
Consumers, too, could benefit if this bill passes: It includes 10 years of tax credits to install all kinds of clean residential technologies, from rooftop solar to heat pumps. The bill would provide $9 billion in rebates for low-income Americans to switch to electric appliances and retrofit their homes to be more energy efficient, and give people a $7,500 tax credit for buying a new electric vehicle.
“The tax credits are incredibly important for creating the market for the transition to clean energy,” says Matt Casale, environment campaigns director at the US Public Interest Research Group. “Peopleto save money and not have to be beholden to volatile fossil fuel prices. But one of the initial barriers is that upfront cost. So having these consumer tax credits available for people is going to be extremely helpful.
At the same time, the bill would set aside over $60 billion to boost manufacturing for clean energy technologies, like solar panels and EVs. An additional $500 million would go toward heat pump manufacturing and minerals processing. All that new manufacturing will feed the new demand from the consumer tax credits, which will encourage prices to continue plummeting as the technologies develop. This should allow more Americans to join the clean energy revolution.
All told, this bill would put the country on track to reduce its emissions by 40 percent by the year 2030. (Though that comes up short of the
Exactly, there is Potential in this line of thought.