—that is, by the few Americans who know about it. Mr Biden hopes to be re-elected next year, and this week he and his administration marked the anniversary of the’s passage by touring the country to tout the benefits it has brought. What impact has the law actually had?was so named in a vain attempt to rally support from voters, who in 2022 were worried about high inflation.
has turbocharged these existing trends. Many of its subsidies are uncapped, meaning that, depending on how many projects are put forward by the private sector, its climate spending could cost anything from $369bn to trillions of dollars. Some of its subsidies are pegged to emissions targets, so—at least in the view of Wood Mackenzie, an energy consultancy—credits could be doled out as late as the 2060s.
Those incentives will have a dramatic impact on America’s ability to reach emissions-reductions targets. It pledged, in the Paris climate agreement of 2015, to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 50-52% from 2005 levels by 2023. A study published inwill be responsible for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 43-48% from 2005 levels.’s other policies will also take time to be felt. The law will allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, but not until 2026.
, be it to wind farms in the plains or hydrogen hubs in Texas or Utah . Mr Turner’s tracker finds that $47.5bn ofinvestments are heading to Republican districts, compared with $6.7bn destined for Democratic ones.is probably safe from serious Republican opposition. Yet Democrats’ efforts to promote the law’s achievements have hardly been a success.