[After years of gridlock, there’s reason to celebrate Congress
passing three bills that will do more to cut U.S. emissions than any
legislation in history. But much more will be needed to reach the
nation’s climate goals and to make clean energy more affordable at
home and abroad. ]
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SUBSIDIES AREN’T ENOUGH. WE NEED INFRASTRUCTURE, STICKS – AND
RESEARCH.  
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Daniel Cohan
August 19, 2022
The Conversation
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_ After years of gridlock, there’s reason to celebrate Congress
passing three bills that will do more to cut U.S. emissions than any
legislation in history. But much more will be needed to reach the
nation’s climate goals and to make clean energy more affordable at
home and abroad. _

,

 

The new Inflation Reduction Act
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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.

In my new book about climate solutions
[[link removed]],
I discuss these and other obstacles standing in the way of a clean
energy transition. Surmounting them 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
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too.

Infrastructure and obstacles

Various studies
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predict [[link removed]] that
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the Inflation Reduction Act will cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to
around 40% below their 2005 levels by 2030. That’s a cut of roughly
1 billion tons per year, far more than any other U.S. legislation has
achieved.

But it still leaves a roughly 10 percentage point gap from President
Joe Biden’s target
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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. The U.S. has around
145,000 gas stations
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only about 6,500 fast-charging
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stations that can power up a battery quickly for a driver on the go.

Over 1,300 gigawatts of wind, solar and battery projects – several
times the existing capacity – are already waiting to be built
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a lack of grid connections and backlogged approval processes by
regional grid operators.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act
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passed by Congress last year provides some funding for chargers, power
lines and pipelines, but nowhere near enough. For example, it sets
aside only a few billion dollars for high-voltage power lines
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a tiny share of the hundreds of billions of dollars needed
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to chart a path toward net-zero emissions. Its $7.5 billion for
chargers is just a third of what electric car advocates project will
be needed
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[Map of US EV charging stations show large numbers in the Northeast
and West Coast and US cities, but far fewer in less populated
regions.]DOE Alternative Fuels Data Center • Data as of August 2022
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CC BY-ND [[link removed]]

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
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legislation to make it easier to obtain permits for power lines and
pipelines, but doing so would require bipartisan support, and that
remains in doubt
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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 – some of
it from policymakers themselves – 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 fossil-fueled power
plants, require carbon capture at new ones and drive emissions
reductions across a range of industries.

[Biden sits at a desk signing the legislation. Sens. Joe Manchin
(D-WV.) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Reps. James Clyburn (D-SC), Rep.
Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and Rep. Kathy Catsor (D-FL) look over his
shoulder.]President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, the
nation’s most ambitious climate investment yet, on Aug. 16, 2022.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
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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 one stick in the Inflation Reduction Act – its
tax on methane emissions.

States wield powerful regulatory sticks too. Ten states have already
set 100% clean or renewable electricity standards
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California
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and Oregon
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requirements for cleaner fuels, and states like New York
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implementing comprehensive climate strategies. The more states follow
their lead, the more quickly emissions can be cut. The new federal
subsidies will ease the path to doing so.

Ramping up research and global impact

All the new spending has the potential to achieve deep emissions cuts
domestically, but they will have little impact abroad without further
action.

Other countries will only adopt clean technologies if they’re
affordable, but the Inflation Reduction Act’s subsidy buffet is only
available to U.S. citizens and companies. Its rewards for domestic
solar manufacturers may help them gain market share in the U.S., but
they’ll likely do little to reduce prices in markets dominated
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by low-cost Asian manufacturers.

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 like biofuel production
[[link removed]], rather than to prolong the
use of coal power plants or subsidize oil and gas production
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The CHIPS and Science Act
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Biden signed in early August 2022 authorizes $67 billion
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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 [[link removed]], which funds research into the
most cutting-edge energy technologies. As I discuss in my book, that
could be especially important for making clean hydrogen
[[link removed]] cheap, making
geothermal [[link removed]] viable
in more places, and developing new forms of energy storage
[[link removed]]. 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.

After years of gridlock, there’s reason to celebrate Congress
passing three bills that will do more to cut U.S. emissions than any
legislation in history. But much more will be needed to reach the
nation’s climate goals and to make clean energy more affordable at
home and abroad.[The Conversation]

Daniel Cohan
[[link removed]], Associate
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, _Rice University
[[link removed]]_

This article is republished from The Conversation
[[link removed]] under a Creative Commons license. Read
the original article
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* Inflation Reducation Act
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* clean energy
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* carbon emissions
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* Climate Change
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* Science
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