Saving the Inflation Reduction Act

Steve Ghan -

Energy Investment data from cleaninvestmentmonitor.org / CC BY 4.0

With a new federal administration that has other priorities, our climate challenge for 2025 will be protecting as much of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) as we can. Recall that, in 2022, the IRA approved hundreds of billions of dollars in generous subsidies for carbon-free technology such as electric vehicles, heat pumps, batteries, clean hydrogen, nuclear power, wind power, and solar power. It is the signature climate legislation passed by the Biden Administration.

Those IRA subsidies are now threatened by the Republican priority to extend the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 without further increasing the federal deficit. The IRA also places a price on methane emissions from leaking oil and gas wells. In 2025, we’ll leverage the fact that 80% of the IRA funding is going to Congressional districts represented by Republicans. Moreover, last August, eighteen Republican Members of Congress wrote to Speaker Johnson urging him to preserve the IRA-funded projects in their districts. Our job is to remind our Republican representatives what their districts would lose if the IRA subsidies are repealed by Republicans via budget reconciliation (which would bypass the Senate’s filibuster). With a very narrow Republican majority in both the U.S. House and Senate, it should not be difficult to save much, if not most, of the IRA. But our representatives won’t spare the IRA unless we tell them they represent constituents who are counting on it.

What you can do

Our Republican representative Dan Newhouse needs to hear support for the IRA from his constituents. You can either write to him on his website (​​newhouse.house.gov/address_authentication?form=/contact) or use the Citizens Climate Lobby tool (community.citizensclimate.org/tools/write-congress), which provides a letter template that you can edit for your message to Dan Newhouse. The CCL tool, as of the writing of this article, suggests that you write your message to “remind them that climate is a priority issue for people who voted in the election, and to urge them to work together to prioritize climate legislation in the 119th Congress.” (I expect this message to change, perhaps by the time this column is published, to focus on the Inflation Reduction Act more specifically.)

To craft your message, I recommend you use the Clean Investment Monitor. Its database shows quarterly increases in national totals, statewide totals, and geographical locations of investments in clean energy manufacturing (batteries, electrolyzers, solar energy, wind energy, critical minerals, zero emissions vehicles, and fueling equipment), energy and industry (carbon management, solar, wind, storage, hydrogen, nuclear, sustainable aviation fuel, clean fuels, pulp and paper, iron and steel, and concrete), and retail (zero-emission vehicles, heat pumps, and distributed electricity and storage). Although the database doesn’t provide separate totals for Congressional districts, its map of the location of large projects shows that several of them are in Newhouse’s district and lists their funding levels. You’ll find that there is a large battery manufacturing plant in Moses Lake, for example. 

We have found that, although the CCL letter template is easy to send without any changes, our representatives pay much more attention to messages that are substantially or completely different from the template. So, get your creative juices flowing and make your message personal. Tell Newhouse why you care about climate change and which of the climate solutions you’ve already embraced. It’s particularly helpful if you can say that IRA subsidies influenced your decision to choose them (even better if you work on one of the IRA-subsidized projects).

Your message is more persuasive than you might think. Few people write to their representatives in Congress, and most just send a canned message. By speaking from your experience and research, your message will be unique and powerful. Go for it!

Sources:

Climate scientist Steve Ghan leads the Tri-Cities Chapter of Citizens' Climate Lobby