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How the Inflation Reduction Act set up the Biden administration to crack down on fossil fuels.
The Biden administration’s climate policy has entered an aggressive new phase. For the first time since the president took office, the star of the show isn’t Congress, the Department of Energy, or any other economic agency. It’s the good old Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA is back.
Over the past few weeks, the EPA has unveiled an ambitious set of proposals that could remake the country’s transportation and power sectors. One proposal could cut toxic air pollution and greenhouse gases from cars, trucks, vans, and other vehicles by 2032. Another will restrict the amount of mercury and arsenic that coal-fired power plants can release.
But the most important new rule could come as soon as next week, when the agency is expected to propose slashing greenhouse gas pollution from new and existing power plants. That proposal — which will likely rank among the bluntest and most pugnacious climate protections ever issued by the EPA — will likely require coal and natural-gas plants to capture a large share of carbon emissions from their smoke stacks, preventing it from ever reaching the atmosphere.
If finalized and enforced, those rules should help accomplish Biden’s goal of generating 80% of the country’s electricity with zero-carbon sources by 2030, part of his broader vision of halving climate pollution by that year. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that every country must cut carbon pollution in half by 2030 in order for the world to hit the 1.5-degree goal.
The EPA’s reawakening heralds a broader shift in President Joe Biden’s climate policy. Since January 2021, much of his administration’s efforts have been focused on dangling new carrots in front of industry to entice decarbonization. Biden sometimes took a conciliatory approach to energy issues to win the support of Senator Joe Manchin, and the president has a major climate law — the Inflation Reduction Act — to show for it. Now, as his administration begins to implement that law, it has also picked up a big stick to crack down on unabated fossil fuels.
If you’ve hungered for a more punitive approach to the Biden administration’s climate policy, in other words, then you’re about to get it. But remember to thank the law that made it possible: the Inflation Reduction Act itself.
Although it has gone little acknowledged, the IRA is essential to Biden’s regulatory policy. Without the IRA’s generous subsidies, the EPA couldn’t adopt such aggressive rules to fight fossil fuels. In at least one case, the EPA actually needed the IRA to pass before it could issue its power-plant regulations, so that the climate law could underwrite the carbon-capture technology that the rules are expected to require.
This fact is essential to understanding the next 18 months of American climate policy — and it should prompt at least a modest reconsideration of the IRA.
Why is the IRA so important? It’s because of, well, the rules that rule how the federal government makes rules. Call them the meta-rules — the set of executive orders, court decisions, and informal precedent that constrain how agencies like the EPA can issue new regulations.
Since the 1970s, federal agencies like the EPA have had to consider a proposed rule’s costs and benefits before they can issue it. This is a technocratic and persnickety undertaking, conducted with Excel spreadsheets and groaning economic models, in which staff try to add up all of a rule’s costs to society and all of its benefits.
In the clean-car rules, these sums can rise into the tens of billions. To name a few categories: The cost of repairing EVs is $24 billion, while the benefits of reducing particulate pollution in the air are as high as $34 billion.
But this exercise is important, because it effectively determines how aggressive a proposed rule can be. If a rule’s costs exceed its benefits to society, then it’s too ambitious, at least under current law. Only proposals that make society richer in dollar terms are allowed to become law. (According to the EPA’s math, the clean-car rule’s benefits exceed its costs by more than $1 trillion.)
Here’s the key, though: These analyses only look at a rule’s direct costs, which means any status quo policies — and every existing federal program that makes it cheaper to follow the rule — are taken for granted. So the IRA’s hundreds of billions of dollars in tax credits function effectively as “free money” in these analyses, allowing the EPA to adopt much more aggressive rules than it otherwise would.
This has a modest effect on the EPA’s proposed rules for cars and trucks, but it’s expected to be transformative for the forthcoming power plant rules. One of the IRA’s most controversial tax credits, for instance, pays power plants and other factories $85 for each ton of carbon pollution that they capture from their smokestacks and pump into the ground. At best, that might seem like a way to pay oil and gas companies for a form of greenwashing; at worst, it might look like a subsidy for fossil-fuel extraction.
But when coupled with an EPA limit on the amount of carbon that power plants can release into the atmosphere, it becomes revolutionary. The new rule will reportedly require some form of carbon-capture technology on existing and new fossil-fuel-burning power plants. Thanks to the IRA, the EPA can essentially ignore the first $85 a ton of regulatory costs that the rule places on companies.
These new “aggressive regulations would not have been possible without the IRA,” Leah Stokes, a political-science professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told me.
“It is totally a function of the IRA that they’re able to do this. They’re able to make arguments with 45Q, for example, that carbon capture and storage is a viable technology,” she added, referring to the carbon-capture subsidy by its section of the tax code.
Some climate experts expect that these rules will ultimately discourage new fossil-fuel plants from getting built, even if carbon-capture technology becomes cheaper, simply because it will be cheaper and easier to build solar, wind, or nuclear plants.
The IRA is important as well because the EPA is so limited in what kind of restrictions it can impose on power plants in the first place. Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that the agency could not fight climate change by creating a national market for carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act, but that it could issue technology-by-technology guidelines.
That fact should prompt a popular rethink of the IRA. Since the law passed last summer, a common line of criticism has focused on its magnanimity: that it mostly uses subsidies, and not new taxes or mandates, to decarbonize the economy. The IRA uses “carrots without sticks,” critics have written, subsidizing some of the technological investments that fossil-fuel companies were already planning on making.
This was never quite true. The IRA by itself included a few new taxes, including a fee on methane leaks from fossil-fuel infrastructure that was meant to go hand-in-hand with new EPA rules. (House Republicans have sought to repeal that tax in their new budget proposal.) But the IRA was also never meant to stand on its own, and many of its authors knew that by making clean energy cheap, it would make future climate regulations cheaper. In other words, Biden’s climate policy never entailed only a never-ending booze cruise of green subsidies, as some global commentators have alleged over the past eight months. Instead, it required adopting a politically sensitive sequence of policies: first, a reconciliation bill to subsidize the good; then, a regulatory revival to penalize the bad.
Of course, the sharply conservative Supreme Court must allow Biden to actually carry out the second half of that agenda. But if it does, then we’ll discover something new about donkey carts: The sweeter the carrots, the harder you can whack with the stick.
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Though it might not be as comprehensive or as permanent as renewables advocates have feared, it’s also “just the beginning,” the congressman said.
President-elect Donald Trump’s team is drafting an executive order to “halt offshore wind turbine activities” along the East Coast, working with the office of Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, the congressman said in a press release from his office Monday afternoon.
“This executive order is just the beginning,” Van Drew said in a statement. “We will fight tooth and nail to prevent this offshore wind catastrophe from wreaking havoc on the hardworking people who call our coastal towns home.”
The announcement indicates that some in the anti-wind space are leaving open the possibility that Trump’s much-hyped offshore wind ban may be less sweeping than initially suggested.
In its press release, Van Drew’s office said the executive order would “lay the groundwork for permanent measures against the projects,” leaving the door open to only a temporary pause on permitting new projects. The congressman had recently told New Jersey reporters that he anticipates only a six-month moratorium on offshore wind.
The release also stated that the “proposed order” is “expected to be finalized within the first few months of the administration,” which is a far cry from Trump’s promise to stop projects on Day 1. If enacted, a pause would essentially halt all U.S. offshore wind development because the sought-after stretches of national coastline are entirely within federal waters.
Whether this is just caution from Van Drew’s people or a true moderation of Trump’s ambition we’ll soon find out. Inauguration Day is in less than a week.
Imagine for a moment that you’re an aerial firefighter pilot. You have one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, and now you’ve been called in to fight the devastating fires burning in Los Angeles County’s famously tricky, hilly terrain. You’re working long hours — not as long as your colleagues on the ground due to flight time limitations, but the maximum scheduling allows — not to mention the added external pressures you’re also facing. Even the incoming president recently wondered aloud why the fires aren’t under control yet and insinuated that it’s your and your colleagues’ fault.
You’re on a sortie, getting ready for a particularly white-knuckle drop at a low altitude in poor visibility conditions when an object catches your eye outside the cockpit window: an authorized drone dangerously close to your wing.
Aerial firefighters don’t have to imagine this terrifying scenario; they’ve lived it. Last week, a drone punched a hole in the wing of a Québécois “Super Scooper” plane that had traveled down from Canada to fight the fires, grounding Palisades firefighting operations for an agonizing half-hour. Thirty minutes might not seem like much, but it is precious time lost when the Santa Ana winds have already curtailed aerial operations.
“I am shocked by what happened in Los Angeles with the drone,” Anna Lau, a forestry communication coordinator with the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, told me. The Montana DNRC has also had to contend with unauthorized drones grounding its firefighting planes. “We’re following what’s going on very closely, and it’s shocking to us,” Lau went on. Leaving the skies clear so that firefighters can get on with their work “just seems like a no-brainer, especially when people are actively trying to tackle the situation at hand and fighting to save homes, property, and lives.”
Courtesy of U.S. Forest Service
Although the Super Scooper collision was by far the most egregious case, according to authorities there have been at least 40 “incidents involving drones” in the airspace around L.A. since the fires started. (Notably, the Federal Aviation Administration has not granted any waivers for the air space around Palisades, meaning any drone images you see of the region, including on the news, were “probably shot illegally,” Intelligencer reports.) So far, law enforcement has arrested three people connected to drones flying near the L.A. fires, and the FBI is seeking information regarding the Super Scooper collision.
Such a problem is hardly isolated to these fires, though. The Forest Service reports that drones led to the suspension of or interfered with at least 172 fire responses between 2015 and 2020. Some people, including Mike Fraietta, an FAA-certified drone pilot and the founder of the drone-detection company Gargoyle Systems, believe the true number of interferences is much higher — closer to 400.
Law enforcement likes to say that unauthorized drone use falls into three buckets — clueless, criminal, or careless — and Fraietta was inclined to believe that it’s mostly the former in L.A. Hobbyists and other casual drone operators “don’t know the regulations or that this is a danger,” he said. “There’s a lot of ignorance.” To raise awareness, he suggested law enforcement and the media highlight the steep penalties for flying drones in wildfire no-fly zones, which is punishable by up to 12 months in prison or a fine of $75,000.
“What we’re seeing, particularly in California, is TikTok and Instagram influencers trying to get a shot and get likes,” Fraietta conjectured. In the case of the drone that hit the Super Scooper, it “might have been a case of citizen journalism, like, Well, I have the ability to get this shot and share what’s going on.”
Emergency management teams are waking up, too. Many technologies are on the horizon for drone detection, identification, and deflection, including Wi-Fi jamming, which was used to ground climate activists’ drones at Heathrow Airport in 2019. Jamming is less practical in an emergency situation like the one in L.A., though, where lives could be at stake if people can’t communicate.
Still, the fact of the matter is that firefighters waste precious time dealing with drones when there are far more pressing issues that need their attention. Lau, in Montana, described how even just a 12-minute interruption to firefighting efforts can put a community at risk. “The biggest public awareness message we put out is, ‘If you fly, we can’t,’” she said.
Fraietta, though, noted that drone technology could be used positively in the future, including on wildfire detection and monitoring, prescribed burns, and communicating with firefighters or victims on the ground.
“We don’t want to see this turn into the FAA saying, ‘Hey everyone, no more drones in the United States because of this incident,’” Fraietta said. “You don’t shut down I-95 because a few people are running drugs up and down it, right? Drones are going to be super beneficial to the country long term.”
But critically, in the case of a wildfire, such tools belong in the right hands — not the hands of your neighbor who got a DJI Mini 3 for Christmas. “Their one shot isn’t worth it,” Lau said.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that the Québécois firefighting planes are called Super Scoopers, not super soakers.
Plus 3 more outstanding questions about this ongoing emergency.
As Los Angeles continued to battle multiple big blazes ripping through some of the most beloved (and expensive) areas of the city on Friday, a question lingered in the background: What caused the fires in the first place?
Though fires are less common in California during this time of the year, they aren’t unheard of. In early December 2017, power lines sparked the Thomas Fire near Ventura, California, which burned through to mid-January. At the time it was the largest fire in the state since at least the 1930s. Now it’s the ninth-largest. Although that fire was in a more rural area, it ignited for some of the same reasons we’re seeing fires this week.
Read on for everything we know so far about how the fires started.
Six major fires started during the Santa Ana wind event last week:
Officials are investigating the cause of the fires and have not made any public statements yet. Early eyewitness accounts suggest that the Eaton Fire may have started at the base of a transmission tower owned by Southern California Edison. So far, the company has maintained that an analysis of its equipment showed “no interruptions or electrical or operational anomalies until more than one hour after the reported start time of the fire.” A Washington Post investigation found that the Palisades Fire could have risen from the remnants of a fire that burned on New Year’s Eve and reignited.
On Thursday morning, Edward Nordskog, a retired fire investigator from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, told me it was unlikely they had even begun looking into the root of the biggest and most destructive of the fires in the Pacific Palisades. “They don't start an investigation until it's safe to go into the area where the fire started, and it just hasn't been safe until probably today,” he said.
It can take years to determine the cause of a fire. Investigators did not pinpoint the cause of the Thomas Fire until March 2019, more than two years after it started.
But Nordskog doesn’t think it will take very long this time. It’s easier to narrow down the possibilities for an urban fire because there are typically both witnesses and surveillance footage, he told me. He said the most common causes of wildfires in Los Angeles are power lines and those started by unhoused people. They can also be caused by sparks from vehicles or equipment.
At more than 40,000 acres burned total, these fires are unlikely to make the charts for the largest in California history. But because they are burning in urban, densely populated, and expensive areas, they could be some of the most devastating. With an estimated 9,000 structures damaged as of Friday morning, the Eaton and Palisades fires are likely to make the list for most destructive wildfire events in the state.
And they will certainly be at the top for costliest. The Palisades Fire has already been declared a likely contender for the most expensive wildfire in U.S. history. It has destroyed more than 5,000 structures in some of the most expensive zip codes in the country. Between that and the Eaton Fire, Accuweather estimates the damages could reach $57 billion.
While we don’t know the root causes of the ignitions, several factors came together to create perfect fire conditions in Southern California this week.
First, there’s the Santa Ana winds, an annual phenomenon in Southern California, when very dry, high-pressure air gets trapped in the Great Basin and begins escaping westward through mountain passes to lower-pressure areas along the coast. Most of the time, the wind in Los Angeles blows eastward from the ocean, but during a Santa Ana event, it changes direction, picking up speed as it rushes toward the sea.
Jon Keeley, a research scientist with the US Geological Survey and an adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles told me that Santa Ana winds typically blow at maybe 30 to 40 miles per hour, while the winds this week hit upwards of 60 to 70 miles per hour. “More severe than is normal, but not unique,” he said. “We had similar severe winds in 2017 with the Thomas Fire.”
Second, Southern California is currently in the midst of extreme drought. Winter is typically a rainier season, but Los Angeles has seen less than half an inch of rain since July. That means that all the shrubland vegetation in the area is bone-dry. Again, Keeley said, this was not usual, but not unique. Some years are drier than others.
These fires were also not a question of fuel management, Keeley told me. “The fuels are not really the issue in these big fires. It's the extreme winds,” he said. “You can do prescription burning in chaparral and have essentially no impact on Santa Ana wind-driven fires.” As far as he can tell, based on information from CalFire, the Eaton Fire started on an urban street.
While it’s likely that climate change played a role in amplifying the drought, it’s hard to say how big a factor it was. Patrick Brown, a climate scientist at the Breakthrough Institute and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, published a long post on X outlining the factors contributing to the fires, including a chart of historic rainfall during the winter in Los Angeles that shows oscillations between wet and dry years over the past eight decades.
But climate change is expected to make dry years drier and wet years wetter, creating a “hydroclimate whiplash,” as Daniel Swain, a pre-eminent expert on climate change and weather in California puts it. In a thread on Bluesky, Swain wrote that “in 2024, Southern California experienced an exceptional episode of wet-to-dry hydroclimate whiplash.” Last year’s rainy winter fostered abundant plant growth, and the proceeding dryness primed the vegetation for fire.
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Editor’s note: This story was last update on Monday, January 13, at 10:00 a.m. ET.