CLIMATE WIRE | The Inflation Reduction Act could cut U.S. emissions by as much as 48 percent by 2035, according to a new analysis in the journal Science.
The newspaper, released Thursday, is the first to collect results from nine key models to examine the implications of the $369 billion in energy and climate spending from the Climate Act. More than 30 researchers – from the Department of Energy, EPA and numerous universities and environmental nonprofits – participated in the study.
Researchers concluded that U.S. emissions could fall by 43 percent to 48 percent from 2005 levels by 2035. Without the climate law, that reduction would be between 27 and 35 percent.
Amanda Levin, one of the report’s authors and the director of policy analysis for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said that while the models vary based on the expected impact, they all show that IRA policies significantly reduce emissions .
“Regardless of the differences in how we model the Inflation Reduction Act, no matter what type of model we use, they all agree: The Inflation Reduction Act is the largest and most likely historic climate action to date,” she said. said.
The reductions are not deep enough to meet President Joe Biden’s goal of cutting the country’s emissions in half by 2030. That will require additional policies, with some environmentalists calling for stricter regulation in conjunction with the incentives of the Inflation Reduction Act. EPO estimate proposed limits on power plant pollutionwould, for example, lead to emission reductions.
“We’ve taken a huge step forward,” said Jesse Jenkins, one of the report’s authors and an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University’s Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. “But there is still a gap that remains despite the progress that has been made.”
The models are not “crystal balls,” Jenkins said, but show a range of possible outcomes of the Inflation Reduction Act that could indicate how the country can fill that gap.
The analysis found that between 38 and 80 percent of the emissions reductions associated with the Inflation Reduction Act would come from the electricity sector, thanks to incentives for wind and solar energy and carbon capture. By 2030, the sector would see emissions fall between 47 and 83 percent compared to 2005 emissions — compared to between 41 percent and 60 percent without the Inflation Reduction Act, according to the analysis.
John Bistline, the lead author and the program manager of the Electric Power Research Institute’s Energy Systems and Climate Analysis group, said the models largely consider how economic factors will affect adoption of new technologies. But whether the US overcomes implementation challenges — such as scaling supply chains and putting the necessary infrastructure in place — will affect how successful the legislation is at reducing emissions.
“Halving greenhouse gas emissions across the economy is really an all hands on deck situation that requires every kind of technology policy tool at our disposal,” Bistline said in an interview.
Conrad Schneider, senior director of the US Clean Air Task Force, said the analysis shows that the US will need to take additional steps to meet climate goals.
The Biden administration “needs to add a set of strict greenhouse gas emissions rules to the incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act to keep the U.S. on track to meet its climate goals,” said Schneider, who was not involved in the study.
This story also appears in Energy wire.
Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2023. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environmental professionals.