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Republicans seem intent on making the Inflation Reduction Act an electoral issue.
If Republicans repeal parts of a climate law that nobody knew about, did they ever exist?
On Thursday, the Republican-controlled House passed the “Lower Energy Costs Act,” which would not only accelerate fossil fuel projects but also take a blade to a few key provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act. As legislation, the Republican bill is “dead on arrival” in the Senate and stands almost no chance of being passed into law. But it should still be a wakeup call that America’s historic piece of climate legislation isn’t entirely safe.
The stakes are amplified by the fact that while the Inflation Reduction Act is fairly popular on the surface, the public is still pretty clueless about it.
In December, the Yale Program on Climate Communications found that when people were provided with a brief description of the new law, about two in three registered voters, or 68%, said they supported it. That included 66% of those who identified as “liberal” or “moderate” Republicans. But the same poll found that 57% of voters hadn’t heard much about the legislation. That still seems to be the case, as the Heatmap Climate Poll, conducted in February by Benenson Strategy Group, found that some 63% of Americans have heard “not much” or “nothing” about what is contained in the Inflation Reduction Act. I can also personally confirm that no one seems to know what the hell it is by the blank stares I receive whenever people ask me what I’ve been writing about recently.
Though Biden‘s stance on climate policy was a major draw for voters during the election, 53% of Democrats and 73% of independents reported not hearing much about his signature climate package, per the Heatmap poll.
Provisions like the electric vehicle tax credit, which has been grabbing headlines for months, are somehow failing to appear on many people’s radar. Even 62% of people who said they "wanted to drive an electric vehicle in the future" also reported that they didn't know much about the IRA, and 45% of all respondents reported they weren't aware of the tax credit until taking Heatmap's survey.
It’s not exactly a surprise that people don’t know the ins and outs of a 700-plus page mega-bill that went by several different names over the course of more than a year of grueling, will-they-or-won’t-they-pass it negotiations. The fact that the biggest climate and clean energy package in history is called “The Inflation Reduction Act” doesn’t help, either.
It’s clear that once people learn about what’s in it, those provisions will be popular, said Jamal Raad, co-founder and senior advisor for Evergreen Action, a climate policy advocacy group. Indeed, the Yale survey found that when asked if they support government subsidies for renewable energy, electric vehicles, and home energy efficiency, most Americans said yes. “The challenge of the movement and the administration and others is to tell the story of the clean energy future we’re building. The polling suggests that that work still lies ahead of us,” said Raad.
To be clear, the Republican bill doesn’t entirely repeal the Inflation Reduction Act. It would eliminate a fee on methane emissions and a $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, much of which is dedicated to spurring renewable energy projects in low-income communities. A section titled “Homeowner Energy Freedom” contains provisions that would cut rebates and contractor training for installing energy efficient, electric appliances like heat pumps and induction stoves.
There was already a question about whether some of these programs would actually reach the public, as they rely on states to apply for the funding and distribute it. “There’s a risk of Republican governors deciding they’re not going to take advantage of projects or programs,” said Josh Freed, who leads the climate and energy program at the center-left think tank Third Way. He said it was a problem that advocates like himself need to think through. “How do we communicate to voters that the decisions that governors are making are literally hurting their pockets?”
It also won’t help that navigating the web of tax credits and rebates has already been a challenge for consumers. On Friday, the Treasury Department unveiled new rules for the electric vehicle tax credit that will probably dramatically scale back which models qualify, at least in the short term. Some homeowners eager to take advantage of rebates to replace their boilers and water heaters with electric versions have come up against skeptical contractors who barely understand how the rebates work themselves.
Still, Raad thinks the public will begin to feel the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act soon enough, due to the nature of some of the other provisions, like federal tax credits for wind and solar farms and domestic manufacturing. “You will see major investment in rural and Republican areas just due to the nature of where clean energy is. So the tax credits are a pretty decent check on these funds being distributed pretty much across the country,” he said.
At least so far, those tax credits don’t appear to be on Republicans’ short list to nix. To Raad, the House energy package that passed this week was more about appealing to Republican donors in the fossil fuel industry, who want support for more drilling, than riling up the conservative base. But some members of Congress have indicated it’s just the beginning of a push for full repeal.
“They’re gonna have to try to point to some things that they’re doing to govern, and energy seems to be one of those things that they have enough agreement on that they can actually introduce legislation,” said Freed. “Whether there's a broader appeal to the public than Republican primary voters is a very big question. But I think they’re gonna keep going after it.”
The Heatmap Climate Poll of 1,000 American adults was conducted via online panels by Benenson Strategy Group from Feb. 15 to 20, 2023. The survey included interviews with Americans in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.02 percentage points. You can read more about the topline results here.
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Without the endangerment finding on greenhouse gases, the state could have a case for re-imposing its own greenhouse limits on auto emissions.
Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency has moved to abdicate the federal government’s responsibility to regulate greenhouse gas emissions for vehicles. At this point it’s only a proposal, and legal challenges to the shift could take years to resolve even after the change gets finalized.
But if the law eventually closes the door on national standards, it might open a new one for states.
The Clean Air Act prohibits states from enacting their own pollution regulations for mobile sources, such as cars and trucks. California, however, is allowed to request a waiver from the EPA to create its own, stricter rules, since the state was already regulating vehicle pollution prior to the law’s passage. Once EPA approves one of California’s waivers, other states can subsequently adopt the stricter rules without requesting the same federal dispensation.
At first California’s air quality regulations were focused on more traditional health-harming pollutants such as ozone and particulate matter. But in 2005, California created the world’s first greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars, beginning with model year 2009, and requested a waiver from the EPA to enforce them.
At the time the EPA did not have any national standards for greenhouse gas emissions, but a seminal court case would soon force it to create them. In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts vs. EPA that greenhouse gases are pollutants, as defined by the Clean Air Act, and that the agency has a duty to regulate them if it finds that they endanger public health or welfare. In 2009, the EPA under President Obama issued its “endangerment finding,” determining under a mountain of evidence that yes, greenhouse gases threaten public health, and prompting the development of the first federal climate standards for vehicles.
Now the Trump administration is trying to reverse that finding and put an end to federal climate regulations for vehicles once and for all.
At the same time, Trump has approved a move by Congress to rescind California’s latest waivers — although the move was legally dubious and the state is challenging it in court. Congress revoked the waivers under the Congressional Review Act, a law that allows the legislative branch to undo recently-finalized agency rules with a simple majority, despite previous rulings from the Government Accountability Office and the Senate parliamentarian that the waivers are not “rules” as defined by the Congressional Review Act.
But if the EPA says the Clean Air Act does not require the agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, does California even need those waivers?
“If I were the state of California and the endangerment finding gets rescinded, I would argue that there are no federal standards,” Ann Carlson, a professor of environmental law at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a former Biden administration official, told me. “There is, in the view of EPA, no need to regulate, and therefore states shouldn’t be preempted. I don’t know if that’s a winner, but I think it’s worth a try.”
Eliminating the endangerment finding would give states a solid argument for being able to regulate greenhouse emissions themselves, Carlson told me. But what would make the argument a “slam dunk,” she said, was if the Supreme Court ultimately overturned Massachusetts vs. EPA, and ruled that greenhouse gases are not air pollutants under the Clean Air Act after all.
The road to that outcome would be long and could veer in a different direction if Democrats retake the White House in 2028. First, the EPA has to put out its proposal for public comments and issue a final decision. That process alone could take a year. Then states or environmental groups would challenge the decision in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which would likely take another year to reach a ruling, putting us into mid-2027 or so.
While we won’t know what EPA’s exact argument will be until it issues the final decision, the justifications it has put forward so far are weak, according to experts. The agency’s main claim in the proposal is that it can only regulate pollutants that endanger health through local or regional exposures — the global problem of climate change doesn’t count. “This is hard to square with the Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts vs. EPA,” Harvard Law School’s Jody Freeman told me, “but EPA claims that doesn’t settle it.”
Carlson said she thinks there’s a pretty good chance the D.C. court would strike down the EPA’s attempt to reverse the endangerment finding. But the Trump administration would presumably appeal that ruling to the Supreme Court, which would present an opportunity for the conservative majority to overturn Massachusetts vs. EPA. Chief Justice Roberts, along with Justices Alito and Thomas, dissented in the original 2007 decision, while Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was confirmed in 2018, “has made clear his disdain for using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gasses,” Carlson said.
There are a lot of open questions about what would happen next. If the case is still ongoing by 2029, the next administration could decide to withdraw it, or simply to reinstate the endangerment finding.
Another wrinkle: The Inflation Reduction Act amended the Clean Air Act to explicitly define greenhouse gases as pollutants under new sections of the law. That could make it harder for the Supreme Court to overturn Massachusetts vs. EPA, although the court has previously held that different sections of the law may define “air pollutant” differently.
Finally, even if the case goes all the way to the point of reversing Massachusetts vs. EPA, there would probably still need to be additional litigation to clarify what states can do, Atid Kimelman, a clean vehicles attorney for the National Resources Defense Council, told me.
He noted that the federal government might argue that regardless of the fact that the EPA isn’t regulating greenhouse gases, states are still preempted, as the whole point of the preemption in the Clean Air Act is to make sure that the country doesn’t have 50 different standards for motor vehicles. Another hurdle might be that the federal Energy Policy Conservation Act, which authorizes the Department of Transportation to set fuel economy standards, also preempts states from adopting their own vehicle regulations.
“This is somewhat novel territory that hasn’t really played out in courts,” he said. “These are arguments that have to be tested.”
Along with Senator John Curtis of Utah, the Iowa senator is aiming to preserve the definition of “begin construction” as it applies to tax credits.
Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley wants “begin construction” to mean what it means.
To that end, Grassley has placed a “hold” on three nominees to the Treasury Department, the agency tasked with writing the rules and guidance for implementing the tax provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, many of which depend on that all-important definition.
Grassley and other Republican senators had negotiated a “glidepath for the orderly phaseout” of tax credits for renewables, the senator in a statement announcing the hold, giving developers until July 2026 to start construction on projects (or complete the projects and have them operating by the end of 2027) to qualify for tax credits.
Days after signing the law, however, President Trump signed an executive order calling for new guidance on what exactly starting construction means. The title of that order, “Ending Market Distorting Subsidies for Unreliable, Foreign Controlled Energy Sources,” has generated understandable concern within the renewables industry that, as part of a deal to get conservative House members to support the bill, the Treasury Department will write new guidance making it much more difficult for wind and solar projects to qualify for tax credits.
“What it means for a project to ‘begin construction'’ has been well established by Treasury guidance for more than a decade,” Grassley said. Under these longstanding definitions, “beginning construction” can mean undertaking “physical work of a significant nature,” which can include or buying certain long-lead equipment or components like transformers. Another way to qualify for the credits is to spend 5% of the total cost of the project.
A more restrictive interpretation of “begin construction,” however, could turn the tax credit language into a dead letter, especially when combined with the rest of the administration’s full-spectrum legal assault on renewable energy.
Grassley said that new guidance is expected within two weeks, and that “until I can be certain that such rules and regulations adhere to the law and congressional intent, I intend to continue to object to the consideration of these Treasury nominees.”Grassley has a long history with production tax credits for wind energy, playing a pivotal role in their extension in 2015. “As the father of the first wind energy tax credit in 1992, I can say that the tax credit was never meant to be permanent,” Grassley said at the time. “The five-year extension for wind energy brings about the best possible long-term outcome that provides certainty, predictability and a responsible phase-down of a tax incentive for a renewable energy source.”
Almost 60% of Iowa’s electricity is generated by wind turbines, the highest proportion of any state, according to Energy Information Administration data.
Utah Senator John Curtis has joined Grassley in placing a hold on nominees, delaying their vote before the whole Senate, according to Politico’s Joshua Siegel. Grassley and Curtis, alongside Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, were unable to get a meeting with the Treasury Department to discuss the guidance, Siegel reported.
On Puerto Rico’s water crisis, LNG’s tax scam, a nuclear safety scandal
Current conditions: Wildfire smoke in Alberta, Canada, is so thick that the airport had a visibility of just about 650 feet, and the air quality index hit 2241, 10 times higher than “hazardous” levels • At least 10 Chinese provinces are on alert for heavy rainfall this week, with as much as 8 inches deluging Beijing • Prolonged heatwave conditions in southeastern Europe are raising the risk of fires.
A wildfire in Arizona’s Grand Canyon National Park that has burned for nearly a month has grown into the largest blaze in the continental U.S. so far this year, scorching more than 114,000 acres as of this weekend. The Dragon Bravo fire, near the park’s North Rim, is expected to increase in size in the coming days due to the exceptionally dry, hot weather, The New York Times reported.
It’s far from the only major fire burning out West. The Gifford fire in California grew to nearly 40,000 acres on Sunday within the Los Padres National Forest in south-central California. The fire was just 3% contained as of late Sunday evening, according to the federal wildfire tracker, InciWeb. Last month, my colleague Jeva Lange wrote that the “next big wave” of wildfires out West “could happen any day.” As she reported, “the components for a bad fire season are all there — the landscape just needs a spark.” Lightning has been a particular concern in the Pacific Northwest, where thunderstorms led to 72 fires in two Oregon counties during just one night in June. A lightning strike is the likely cause of the Dragon Bravo fire.
One of many anti-corruption protests in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Jose Jimenez/Getty Images
Nearly eight years after Hurricane María decimated Puerto Rico’s power grid, the United States’ most populous territory still suffers electricity outages every week and faces rising utility bills. But the island of more than 3 million American citizens is reeling this week from yet another utility failure: Water outages. As many as 180,000 households in Puerto Rico lost access to running water last week, and thousands are still without service. The electricity and water issues are combined. Updates on the state-run water utility’s X page indicated that several water pumping stations are out of service due to a lack of electricity. Governor Jenniffer González Colón called in the National Guard to help distribute water.
It’s just the latest crisis afflicting the Caribbean territory’s basic infrastructure as the island enters the peak of hurricane season. The local government last month escalated its battle with New Fortress Energy, the financially troubled New York-based gas company that provides its fuel and operates its power plants. González Colón is considering ending the island’s contract with LUMA Energy, the private consortium that controls the power grid. Faced with ongoing blackouts, the government just scrapped Puerto Rico’s renewable energy targets and extended the life of a highly polluting coal plant, threatening devastating health consequences for the surrounding community, as I reported earlier this summer for the MIT Technology Review. And, despite González Colón’s chummy relationship with President Donald Trump, federal funding for Puerto Rico’s post-María reconstruction is still trickling out almost a decade after the storm.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is bringing tax credits for wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles to a swift end on the grounds that the technologies are mature and therefore no longer worth subsidizing. Yet America’s largest exporter of liquified natural gas is seeking “alternative fuel” tax credits simply for running its vessels on the fuel they carry, exactly as they’re designed to do. The tax credit, originally signed into law by former President George W. Bush in 2005, was intended to incentivize the switch from gasoline and diesel to biofuels, LNG, and liquid fuels derived from coal. The tankers Cheniere Energy, the nation’s top overseas seller of American LNG, uses to ship its fuel around the world are built to boil off fuel from the tanks that hold its cargo. But the company is seeking federal rewards for using the LNG, according to an investigation by Inside Climate News. If the Internal Revenue Service approves the request, Cheniere could net more than $140 million.
The Trump administration has vowed to cut back and streamline nuclear regulations to make building new reactors easier, potentially compromising safety. The effort has stirred enough drama at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that a Republican commissioner resigned last week. Now a scandal at the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant in Florida is providing a timely reminder of why strict oversight exists over atomic energy stations. An inspection report on the plant, owned by Florida Power & Light, revealed that workers feared reporting safety problems to upper management lest they face retaliation. And that comes right as a database shows safety violations soared over the past year, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
The investigation came as the Department of Energy discovered four radioactive wasp nests at the defunct Savannah River nuclear facility in South Carolina. The finding suggested that environmental contamination at the site, which previously developed weapons-grade material for the U.S. government, is more extensive than previously understood. While advocates of nuclear energy draw clear distinctions with the military-related sites, political upheaval at the federal agency that oversees radioactive materials could put the growing bipartisan consensus on building more reactors at risk.
Tesla’s board approved a $30 billion payout of shares to Elon Musk in a new compensation deal, according to a regulatory filing on Monday that followed the billionaire's threat to leave the electric automaker if he didn't receive more stock.
The move came days after a jury in Florida found flaws in Tesla’s self-driving software partly responsible for a crash that killed a 22-year-old woman in 2019 and severely injured her boyfriend, The New York Times reported. If Friday's verdict holds, Tesla will be on the hook for as much as $243 million in damages to the parents of the woman and her boyfriend. The jury decided that Tesla bore 33% of the blame for the crash. Tesla said it would appeal. It’s a setback for Musk’s driverless ambitions. As Tesla’s human-driven automotive offerings stalled out last year, Heatmap contributor Andrew Moseman wrote that, “sure, maybe it will be the one to crack full autonomous driving. But in practical terms, that tech is not close to reality, and Tesla’s version of it has encountered its fair share of bugs and been sued over crashes.”
New research from Stanford University has “upended conventional wisdom about electric vehicle battery management. Contrary to popular belief, a more dynamic driving style could significantly extend the lifespan of EV batteries,” including not charging the units to 100%.