What Has All This Back-and-Forth Climate Legislating Bought Us?

When Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, researchers estimated it would cut U.S. carbon pollution by more than 40% by the mid-2030s. Then President Trump and a GOP majority partially repealed the law, and many of those emissions declines looked doubtful. What will U.S. carbon emissions look like after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act?

We’re starting to get a sense. On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob talks with John Bistline and Ryna Cui about a new paper they coauthored modeling the Inflation Reduction Act and One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s combined effects. Bistline is the head of science at Watershed and a former researcher at the Electric Power Research Institute. Cui is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy and the research director for its Center for Global Sustainability.

Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap News.

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Here is an excerpt from their conversation:

Robinson Meyer: One of the many things the IRA was supposed to do — but I think one of the things that it got the most credit for, and that ultimately got some people who were maybe wavering about the law to get to yes — is it was supposed to really drag down the path of U.S. emissions, I think as far as 33% or 35% below where they would be otherwise.

It’s now been partially repealed, and without getting too much into it, basically, as we’ve talked about before, the solar and wind and some of the clean energy tax credits are going to terminate as soon as this year or next year. And then tax credits for energy storage for nuclear will remain on the books for longer. And it’s a more complicated story as we get into EVs. But it’s now been partially terminated. Do we have a sense for where U.S. emissions will wind up? Will they be lower thanks to passing IRA than they would have been in a world where we didn’t get IRA, even though we now also have OBBBA?

John Bistline: Yeah, I think one of the big stories from this paper, in aggregating the modeling work that a range of different teams have been doing, is that IRA was roughly expected to double emissions reductions over the next decade. I think the exact number is that, you know, across the economy, greenhouse gas emissions would be something like 40% to 50% below 2005 by 2035 with IRA in place. But without it, given the changes in OBBBA, something closer to 25% to 35% lower than 2005. Just as context, we’re at about 20% below 2005 right now. So with OBBBA, emissions are still projected to decline, just not as steeply as with IRA in place.

Ryna Cui: Yeah, I will add there, and we are also one of the modeling teams that’s doing the emission pathway trajectories. And I totally agree on John’s points there. Definitely IRA and other actually federal action on the climate policy front, it’s an important, very important contributor to the emission reduction trajectory in the U.S. And I do think the context about declining technology costs and also stronger market forces, it’s going to make it even more effective. It’s not like we have IRA going to replace the other enabling factors. So I do think with the ... now the context is all the enabling market forces are more favorable to the transition.

On top of that, with the policy incentive, we’ll see deeper reduction. Of course, with a series of rollbacks, we’re going to slow down that trajectory. But I also want to mention there’s also beyond federal action, there are other level of governments are still engaging and there are potentials to continue those trends.

You can find a full transcript of the episode here.

Mentioned:

The new paper: Impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act and One Big Beautiful Bill Act on the US energy system

A cheat sheet on the energy policy changes in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act

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Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.