How to keep the climate fight alive for a second…

Leah Stokes and Adrian Deveny helped draft the Inflation Reduction Act, the most consequential climate legislation in U.S. history. Now they’re planning how to keep it afloat during the next four years of Donald Trump’s administration.

This plan begins with pushing through as much climate finance and regulation as possible in the waning days of the Biden administration and combating attempts by a hostile Trump administration to reclaim that progress after Inauguration Day.

She continues to push federal, state and local policymakers to ensure that the clean energy projects and factories funded by hundreds of billions of dollars in tax credits create jobs in Republican-controlled states and create districts. These jobs must transform people’s lives to give them a personal stake in the fight for the energy transition – and to give their lawmakers an incentive to protect the climate law that makes them possible.

And unfortunately the plan has to be overcome ​“Some really devastating losses in this fight over the next four years,” said Stokes, a professor and climate policy expert at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who worked with groups like Rewiring America to help draft key energy provisions of the bill.

“That’s not me 100 Percent doom and gloom,” she said during an event on Thursday hosted by The 2035 Initiative, the university-affiliated think tank that she helped found two years ago. But she admitted that she is an optimist – ​“I thought Kamala Harris would win.”

Deveny, founder of political consulting firm Climate Vision and former director of energy and environmental policy for Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer (NY), admitted he is ​“less optimistic.”

This is largely based on him 13 Years of working on climate issues in Congress, the first 10 none of these brought any progress on federal climate legislation. But the patience and preparation paid off with a series of accomplishments during the Biden administration – the bipartisan infrastructure bill in 2021 and the IRA And CHIPS and science law in 2022.

““The Biden administration has achieved some incredible successes,” Deveny said, not only in terms of investments in clean energy projects and manufacturing facilities, but also in booming employment in the clean energy sector. The U.S. Department of Energy reported in August that clean energy employment was increasing 142,000 jobs in 2023and is growing twice as fast as the US economy as a whole.

Still, even current laws are not enough to bring the U.S. in line with the Biden administration’s climate commitments, including cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half 2005 levels 2030 and switching to carbon-free electricity 2035. ​“We would have had to pass another IRA-sized bill next year to be on track to achieve our goals 2030 Goals,” he said. ​“To be on the right track to meet ours 2035 goals, we would have had to pass a bill that was two to three times as large IRA Next year.”

But ​““The truth about climate is that doing nothing is not an option and every tonne saved means a slightly less dire future,” Deveny said. ​“That’s why we always have to fight to get every ton we can.”

So Stokes and Deveny believe advocates can steer climate progress in the right direction in the coming years.

From Biden to Trump 2.0

See you in January 20As Trump is sworn in for his second term, the directive is clear: hold on to as much of the Biden administration’s clean energy agenda as possible.

In recent years, the… IRA and other major bills were not implemented as quickly as their supporters had hoped. That’s because the federal government is moving slowly, said Deveny.

“They’ve already worked at lightning speed for federal agencies — which isn’t really lightning fast — but they’re moving as quickly as they can,” he said.

But Trump promised to claw back any unspent funds from the government IRA, ​“It is critical to make this money available because money not spent runs the risk of never being spent,” Deveny said.

This rush is already underway. In recent months, the pace of federal funding announcements has accelerated DOE Grid modernization grants and loans for distributed solar energy and clean fuel manufacturing, U.S. Department of Agriculture grants for rural electric cooperatives, and Environmental Protection Agency funding ​“Green Bank program for community solar energy, electric trucks, electric school buses and building efficiency. Two days after the election the… DOEThe Loan Programs Office completed a $475 Million dollar loan for a battery recycling plant. More can be expected between now and Inauguration Day.

According to Stokes, federal agencies are also finalizing rules and regulations at breakneck speed. ​“Officials work there IRSin the White House, and the DOE And EPA who have already been working very long hours for months and years, and this is only going to get worse.”

The goal of this work is to solidify the legal status of key Biden administration policies, including EPA Rules to limit methane flaring and leaks from oil and gas operations, limit CO2 emissions from fossil fuel power plants, and establish emission standards for light and heavy-duty vehicles.

“Regulations cannot simply be thrown out,” Stokes said. The last Trump administration’s efforts to reverse the Obama administration’s climate and energy policies encountered a number of legal and administrative challenges.

““There are just a lot of organizations with exceptional lawyers who have an incredible track record of uncovering any sloppiness in rulemaking,” Deveny said.

To be clear, a second Trump administration could choose to violate legal and administrative policies and legal obligations, Stokes warned. ​“When we start thinking about anti-democratic institutions, we also have to think about going beyond the borders.”

I draw on the non-climate benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act

It is not yet clear whether and by what margin the Republicans will retain the majority in the House of Representatives. If they end up controlling both houses of Congress, the industrial policy theory built into the Inflation Reduction Act could be key to keeping the law alive.

“When you actually make things in America, like solar panels, electric vehicles and batteries, there are jobs here in this country,” Stokes said. ​“And if those jobs go to Republican and rural districts, it will be much harder to pick them up.”