A Three-Prong Attack on Carbon Emissions
A trio of new laws will power the energy transition.
Passage of IRA was clearly a big deal, with nearly $380 billion devoted to climate and other environmental issues. But IRA is only one of the three big climate bills passed in the ten months. The three represent a concerted effort to accelerate the energy transition.
The earliest was the Infrastructure Act last November. In early August, Congress followed up with the CHIPS law, and of course the grand finale was the IRA a few weeks later.
The Infrastructure Act was primarily about conventional infrastructure but also made a big investment in clean energy. It put $66 billion into passenger and freight rail; $39 billion to modernize public transit; $11 billion to improve safety for pedestrians and bikers; $7.5 billion to cut emissions from ferries and buses; $7.5 billion for charging stations for EVs; and $6 billion for energy storage. The law also addressed a big bottleneck in the energy system: lack of adequate long-distance transmission capacity. We will need much more robust transmission to achieve a carbon neutral grid.
CHIPS was designed to keep the U.S. from losing the technology race with China. As the name suggests, much of it was about chip making and AI. But researches at RMI point out that it also devotes billions of dollars to energy R&D, including clean energy technologies, hydrogen, nuclear, carbon removal, and building efficiency.
Finally, there’s the IRA, which involves more money than the other two put together. As I noted in an earlier post, it is projected to cut carbon emissions by roughly a billion tons a year by 2030, while eliminating 4-6 billion tons while ramping up. There’s some muttering among GOP politicians about repealing the law,. I’m very skeptical that doing so will be politically feasible after companies have made investment decisions. The Republicans lost their chance to demonize the law when it was passed, and it may be hard to build up a lot of outrage among the base after the fact.
To see the full context, you have to keep in mind the efforts that EPA and states are already making to cut carbon emissions through regulation. The Supreme Court deal EPA’s efforts to regulate emissions a setback, but EPA will undoubtedly come back with some kind of substitute. In the meantime, its authority to regulate carbon emissions from new sources (including vehicles) is unquestioned, as is its ability to limit methane emissions from the oil and gas industry. States have their own regulatory effort. States representing half of the U.S. population have adopted 100% clean energy deadlines in some form.
It is hard to avoid a sense of developing momentum. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, we are not at the beginning of the end of this battle, but we are at least at the end of the beginning.
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About Dan
Dan Farber has written and taught on environmental and constitutional law as well as about contracts, jurisprudence and legislation. Currently at Berkeley Law, he has al…
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GRIST TODAY:
People doubt their actions affect climate change. Is that a bad thing?
https://grist.org/accountability/people-doubt-their-actions-affect-climate-change-personal-responsibility-poll/
Can universities do what they do best by educating and motivating the public to take more responsibility for saving the human race?
Dan, Churchill also said “Never, never, never Give Up” as an exhortation that helped win WWII. Actually, FDR and Winston both did a lot of exhorting during the war, and that really made a positive difference.
So that’s why I keep recommending that universities around the world join together to educate and motivate the public to save the human race, no institution knows how to do it better today, especially since we don’t have any leaders like FDR and Churchill today. And we both have grandchildren that personally motivate us to win the battle against global warming, I visit mine every Saturday and that really strengthens my dedication to this effort.
So please stop using Hofstadter’s Theory of the Impure Public against me, OK? Let’s work together to make the right things happen in time.
Dan, here is an example of scientists from different universities working together on one solution to global warming.
Is UC willing to participate in joint efforts so we can save the human race for our newest and all future generations?:
Upon reflection, scientists evaluate Earth-cooling strategies
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2022/08/upon-reflection-scientists-evaluate-earth-cooling-strategies
Dan, OK, I cannot give up on my goal, if my efforts are going to continue to be Hofstadtered, let me put my paramount question another way:
Does UC take the lead in any worldwide effort to save the human race, like Cornell does to evaluate Earth-cooling strategies?
Or is UC stuck in an underachieving rut until time runs out on the human race, as you said: “Where Berkeley falls short, in my view, is that there’s little leadership from the top and little structure at the campus level to organize climate efforts.”
That’s a real shame that I have been trying my best to avoid admitting because I was always proud to be a Berkeley graduate (and I do want to Thank Berkeley most of all for providing the most wonderful 60 year Joie de Vivre opportunity to meet and marry my classmate) but you left me no choice, and you even supplied the reality check that I can no longer avoid.
Sorry about this Dan, but I am 85 and I am running out of time to try and save an acceptable quality of life for my grandchildren, and all new generations.
P.S. I must now also conclude that a frequent academic vs. public dichotomy that prevents progress to save the human race appears to be Complacency (Dirks Theory) vs. Impurity (Hofstadter Theory)
https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/summer-2013-a-new-deal/administering-change/
And a consequence is out of control global warming. due to “little leadership from the top and little structure at the campus level to organize climate efforts” (per Farber).
Dan, to what extent does the IRA’s explicit recognition that GHGs are “air pollutants” provide EPA and other agencies with additional legal bases for addressing emissions?
I’m going to post something about this whole issue on Monday. It may help prevent the Supreme Court from overruling Mass v. EPA, but I think that was very unlikely anyway. Otherwise, I don’t think it changes much. However, it’s a bit complicated and there are some other specific IRA provisions that may affect regulation.