The U.S. passed a historic climate deal this year — here’s a recap of what’s in the bill
U.S. President Joe Biden holds out his pen to U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and U.S. House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) look on after Biden signed “The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022” into law during a ceremony in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, August 16, 2022.
Leah Millis | Reuters
The Biden administration this year signed a historic climate and tax deal that will funnel billions of dollars into programs designed to speed the country’s clean energy transition and battle climate change.
As the U.S. this year grappled with climate-related disasters from Hurricane Ian in Florida to the Mosquito Fire in California, the Inflation Reduction Act, which contains $369 billion in climate provisions, was a monumental development to mitigate the effects of climate change across the country.
The bill, which President Joe Biden signed into law in August, is the most aggressive climate investment ever taken by Congress and is expected to slash the country’s planet-warming carbon emissions by about 40% this decade and move the country toward a net-zero economy by 2050.
The IRA’s provisions have major implications for clean energy and manufacturing businesses, climate startups and consumers in the coming years. As 2022 comes to a close, here’s a look back at the key elements in the legislation that climate and clean energy advocates will be monitoring in 2023.
Incentives for electric vehicles
The deal offers a federal tax credit worth up to $7,500 to households that buy new electric vehicles, as well as a used EV credit worth up to $4,000 for vehicles that are at least two years old. Starting Jan. 1, people making $150,000 a year or less, or $300,000 for joint filers, are eligible for the new car credit, while people making $75,000 or less, or $150,000 for joint filers, are eligible for the used car credit.
Despite a rise in EV sales in recent years, the transportation sector is still the country’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, with the lack of convenient charging stations being one of the barriers to expansion. The Biden administration has set a goal of 50% electric vehicle sales by 2030.
The IRA limits EV tax credits to vehicles assembled in North America and is intended to wean the U.S. off battery materials from China, which accounts for 70% of the global supply of battery cells for the vehicles. An additional $1 billion in the deal will provide funding for zero-emissions school buses, heavy-duty trucks and public transit buses.
U.S. President Joe Biden gestures after driving a Hummer EV during a tour at the General Motors ‘Factory ZERO’ electric vehicle assembly plant in Detroit, Michigan, November 17, 2021.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Stephanie Searle, a program director at the nonprofit International Council on Clean Transportation, said the combination of the IRA tax credits and state policies will bolster EV sales. The agency projects that roughly 50% or more of passenger cars, SUVs and pickups sold in 2030 will be electric. For electric trucks and buses, the number will be 40% or higher, the group said.
In the upcoming year, Searle said the agency is monitoring the Environmental Protection Agency’s plans to propose new greenhouse gas emissions standards for heavy-duty vehicles starting in the 2027 model year.
“With the IRA already promoting electric vehicles, EPA can and should be bold in setting ambitious standards for cars and trucks,” Searle said. “This is one of the Biden administration’s last chances for strong climate action within this term and they should make good use of it.”
Taking aim at methane gas emissions
Some pumpjacks operate while others stand idle in the Belridge oil field near McKittrick, California. Oil prices rose in early Asian trade on the prospect that a stalled Iran nuclear deal and Moscow’s new mobilization campaign would restrict global supplies.
Mario Tama | Getty Images
The package imposes a tax on energy producers that exceed a certain level of methane gas emissions. Polluters pay a penalty of $900 per metric ton of methane emissions emitted in 2024 that surpass federal limits, increasing to $1,500 per metric ton in 2026.
It’s the first time the federal government has imposed a fee on the emission of any greenhouse gas. Global methane emissions are the second-biggest contributor to climate change after carbon dioxide and come primarily from oil and gas extraction, landfills and wastewater and livestock farming.
Methane is a key component of natural gas and is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide, but doesn’t last as long in the atmosphere. Scientists have contended that limiting methane is needed to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.
The Harris Cattle Ranch feedlot, located along Interstate 5, is the largest producer of beef in California and can produce 150 million pounds of beef a year as viewed on May 31, 2021, near Harris Ranch, California.
George Rose | Getty Images
Robert Kleinberg, a researcher at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, said the methane emitted by the oil and gas industry each year would be worth about $2 billion if it was instead used to generate electricity or heat homes.
“Reducing methane emissions is the fastest way to moderate climate change. Congress recognized this in passing the IRA,” Kleinberg said. “The methane fee is a draconian tax on methane emitted by the oil and gas industry in 2024 and beyond.”
In addition to the IRA provision on methane, the Biden Interior Department this year proposed rules to curb methane leaks from drilling, which it said will generate $39.8 million a year in royalties for the U.S. and prevent billions of cubic feet of gas from being wasted through venting, flaring and leaks.
Boosting clean energy manufacturing
The bill provides $60 billion for clean energy manufacturing, including $30 billion for production tax credits to accelerate domestic manufacturing of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and critical minerals processing, and a $10 billion investment tax credit to manufacturing facilities that are building EVs and clean energy technology.
There’s also $27 billion going toward a green bank called the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which will provide funding to deploy clean energy across the country, but particularly in overburdened communities. And the bill has a hydrogen production tax credit, which provides hydrogen producers with a credit based on the climate attributes of their production methods.
Solar panels are set up in the solar farm at the University of California, Merced, in Merced, California, August 17, 2022.
Nathan Frandino | Reuters
Emily Kent, the U.S. director of zero-carbon fuels at the Clean Air Task Force, a global climate nonprofit, said the bill’s support for low-emissions hydrogen is particularly notable since it could address sectors like heavy transportation and heavy industry, which are hard to decarbonize.
“U.S. climate policy has taken a major step forward on zero-carbon fuels in the U.S. and globally this year,” Kent said. “We look forward to seeing the impacts of these policies realized as the hydrogen tax credit, along with the hydrogen hubs program, accelerate progress toward creating a global market for zero-carbon fuels.”
The clean energy manufacturing provisions in the IRA will also have major implications for startups in the climate space and the big venture capital firms that back them. Carmichael Roberts, head of investment at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, has said the climate initiatives under the IRA will give private investors more confidence in the climate space and could even lead to the creation of up to 1,000 companies.
“Everybody wants to be part of this,” Roberts told CNBC following the passage of the bill in August. Even before the measure passed, “there was already a big groundswell around climate,” he said.
Investing in communities burdened by pollution
The legislation invests more than $60 billion to address the unequal effects of pollution and climate change on low-income communities and communities of color. The funding includes grants for zero-emissions technology and vehicles, and will help clean up Superfund sites, improve air quality monitoring capacity, and provide money to community-led initiatives through Environmental and Climate Justice block grants.
Smoke hangs over the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2020. Powerful, dry winds are sweeping across Northern California for a third day, driving up the risk of wildfires in a region thats been battered by heat waves, freak lightning storms and dangerously poor air quality from blazes.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Research published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters found that communities of color are systematically exposed to higher levels of air pollution than white communities due to redlining, a federal housing discrimination practice. Black Americans are also 75% more likely than white Americans to live near hazardous waste facilities and are three times more likely to die from exposure to pollutants, according to the Clean Air Task Force.
Biden signed an executive order after taking office aimed to prioritize environmental justice and help mitigate pollution in marginalized communities. The administration established the Justice40 Initiative to deliver 40% of the benefits from federal investments in climate change and clean energy to disadvantaged communities.
More recently, the EPA in September launched an office focused on supporting and delivering grant money from the IRA to these communities.
Cutting ag emissions
The deal includes $20 billion for programs to slash emissions from the agriculture sector, which accounts for more than 10% of U.S. emissions, according to EPA estimates.
The president has pledged to reduce emissions from the agriculture industry in half by 2030. The IRA funds grants for agricultural conservation practices that directly improve soil carbon, as well as projects that help protect forests prone to wildfires.
Farmer Roger Hadley harvests corn from his fields in his John Deere combine in this aerial photograph taken over Woodburn, Indiana.
Bing Guan | Reuters
Tesla has changed the meaning of “Full Self-Driving”, also known as “FSD”, to give up on its original promise of delivering unsupervised autonomy.
Since 2016, Tesla has claimed that all its vehicles in production would be capable of achieving unsupervised self-driving capability.
CEO Elon Musk has claimed that it would happen by the end of every year since 2018.
Tesla has even sold a software package, known as “Full Self-Driving Capability” (FSD), for up to $15,000 to customers, promising that the advanced driver-assist system would become fully autonomous through over-the-air software updates.
Almost a decade later, the promise has yet to be fulfilled, and Tesla has already confirmed that all vehicles produced between 2016 and 2023 don’t have the proper hardware to deliver unsupervised self-driving as promised.
Musk has been discussing the upgrade of the computers in these vehicles to appease owners, but there’s no concrete plan to implement it.
While there’s no doubt that Tesla has promised unsupervised self-driving capabilities to FSD buyers between 2016 and 2023, the automaker has since updated its language and now only sells “Full Self-Driving (Supervised)” to customers:
The fine print mentions that it doesn’t make the vehicle “autonomous” and doesn’t promise it as a feature.
In other words, people buying FSD today are not really buying the capability of unsupervised self-driving as prior buyers did.
Furthermore, Tesla’s board has just submitted a new, unprecedented CEO compensation package for shareholders’ approval, which could give Musk up to $1 trillion in stock options pending the achievement of certain milestones.
One of these milestones is Tesla having “10 Million Active FSD Subscriptions.”
At first glance, this would be hopeful for FSD buyers since part of Musk’s compensation would be dependent on delivering on the FSD promises.
However, Tesla has changed the definition of FSD in the compensation package with an extremely vague one”
“FSD” means an advanced driving system, regardless of the marketing name used, that is capable of performing transportation tasks that provide autonomous or similar functionality under specified driving conditions.
Tesla now considers FSD only an “advanced driving system” that should be “capable of performing transportation tasks that prove autonomous or similar functionality”.
The current version of FSD, which requires constant supervising by the driver, could easily fit that description.
Therefore, FSD now doesn’t come with the inital promise of Tesla owners being able to go to sleep in their vehicles and wake up at their destination – a promise that Musk has used to sell Tesla vehicles for years.
Electrek’s Take
The way Tesla discusses autonomy with customers and investors versus how it presents it in its court filings and legally binding documents is strikingly different.
It should be worrying to anyone with an interest in this.
With this very vague description in the new CEO compensation package, Tesla could literally lower the price of FSD and even remove base Autopilot to push customers toward FSD and give Musk hundreds of billions of dollars in shares in the process.
There’s precedent for Tesla decreasing pricing on FSD. Initially, Musk said that Tesla would gradually increase the price of the FSD package as the features improved and approached unsupervised autonomy.
That was true for a while, but then Tesla started slashing FSD prices, which are now down $7,000 from their high in 2023:
The trend is quite apparent and coincidentally began when Tesla’s sales started to decline.
FSD is now a simple ADAS system without any promise of unsupervised self-driving. This might quite honestly be one of the biggest cases of false advertising or bait-and-switch ever.
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The new Chevy Bolt EV is set to enter production later this year, with one fewer shift, following GM’s reduction in production plans at several US plants. Apart from the Bolt, GM promised a new family of affordable EVs. Are those, too, now at risk?
GM says more affordable EVs are coming, but when?
GM remained the number two EV maker in the US after back-to-back record sales months in July and August. However, with the $7,500 federal tax credit set to expire at the end of the month, the company expects a slowdown.
On Thursday, GM sent a note to employees at its Spring Hill plant in Tennessee, outlining plans to reduce output of two Cadillac electric SUVs, the Lyriq and Vistiq.
A source close to the matter confirmed the news to Reuters, saying the production halt will begin in December. GM will significantly reduce output during the first five months of 2026, according to the source.
GM is also delaying the second shift at its Fairfax Assembly Plant in Kansas City, where the new Chevy Bolt is slated to enter production later this year. The Bolt will be the first of a new series of affordable EVs that GM intends to build in Kansas.
However, those too, may now be in jeopardy. According to local news outlets, GM Korea Technical Research Center (GMTCK), a spin-off of GM’s Korean subsidiary, was recently cut out of a secret small EV project it was developing.
GMTCK president Brian McMurray reportedly announced internally last month during a trip to the US that the project was cancelled and only 30% to 40% complete.
A GM Korea spokesperson clarified that “the EV project being led by GMTCK was a global undertaking, not undertaken solely by GM Korea. The spokesperson added, “The project itself has not been canceled; the role of the Korean team has simply changed.”
The new electric car, dubbed “Fun Family,” was scheduled to launch under the Chevy and Buick brands, using a single platform. Production was expected to begin in 2027 with deliveries starting in 2028.
GM Korea exports over 90% of the vehicles it makes to the US, but with the new auto tariffs, the subsidiary is expected to play a drastically smaller role, if any at all. The news is fueling the ongoing rumors that GM could withdraw from Korea altogether.
In addition to the tariffs, South Korea’s recently passed “Yellow Envelope Law” could make it even more difficult for GM with new labor laws.
Will this impact the affordable EVs GM is promising to launch in the US? They are scheduled to be built in Kansas, but with the R&D Center, GM’s second largest globally, following the US, claiming to be excluded from a major global EV project, it can’t be a good sign.
In the meantime, GM already has one of the most affordable electric vehicles in the US, the Chevy Equinox EV. Starting at under $35,000, the company calls it “America’s most affordable” EV with over 315 miles of range.
With the $7,500 federal tax credit still available, GM is promoting Chevy Equinox EV leases for under $250 a month. Nowadays, it’s hard to find any vehicle for under that.
Source: Newsworks Korea
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Connecticut and Rhode Island are suing the Trump administration to overturn its “baseless” decision to halt Revolution Wind, a nearly completed offshore wind farm set to deliver clean power to New England.
Attorneys General William Tong of Connecticut and Peter Neronha of Rhode Island announced Thursday that they’ll file suit in Rhode Island federal court to overturn the August 22 stop-work order from the Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management (BOEM). The order abruptly shut down construction without citing any violation of law or safety threats. Instead, BOEM vaguely referred to “concerns” under its Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act authority, offering no explanation.
Revolution Wind is 15 nautical miles off Rhode Island and expected to come online in 2026. Once complete, the $6 billion project would supply 350,000 homes with electricity and save ratepayers in Connecticut and Rhode Island hundreds of millions of dollars over 20 years. The project supports more than 2,500 jobs across the US, including over 1,000 union construction jobs, and has already cleared every required state and federal review. Construction is already 80% complete.
The lawsuit, to be filed against the Department of the Interior, BOEM, and their nominated leaders, argues that the stop-work order violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the agency’s authority under OCSLA. The complaint says the government’s action is arbitrary, capricious, and undermines both states’ legal and financial commitments.
“Revolution Wind is fully permitted, nearly complete, and months from providing enough American-made, clean, affordable energy to power 350,000 homes. Now, with zero justification, Trump wants to mothball the project, send workers home, and saddle Connecticut families with millions of dollars in higher energy costs,” Tong said. “This kind of erratic and reckless governing is blatantly illegal, and we’re suing to stop it.”
Neronha added, “With Revolution Wind, we have an opportunity to create good-paying jobs for Rhode Islanders, enhance energy reliability, and ensure energy cost savings while protecting our environment. And yet, this stop-work order is not even the latest development in this administration’s all-out assault on wind energy. Just yesterday, we learned of reports that the Administration is pulling in staff from several different unrelated federal agencies, including Health and Human Services, to do its bidding. This is bizarre, this is unlawful, this is potentially devastating, and we won’t stand by and watch it happen.”
Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont said the administration has offered no explanation nearly two weeks after the order. “We hoped to work with the Administration to lower energy costs, strengthen grid reliability, create jobs, and drive economic growth, but only if they share those goals. But if they do not, we will act to preserve this vital project and protect the energy future of Connecticut and the entire New England region,” he said.
Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) called the shutdown “insane, illogical, and illegal,” while Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said, “The Revolution Wind project has already made it through exhaustive reviews by multiple federal agencies, and I doubt Trump’s flimsy excuses for scuttling this project will stand up to legal scrutiny.”
Danish renewables developer Ørsted, which owns a 50% share in Revolution Wind, also announced Thursday that it’s suing the Trump administration in a bid to restart construction on the blocked wind farm.
Read more: Trump’s latest offshore wind cancellation is a threat to the grid – ISO New England
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