Can Biden's climate law survive Trump?
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 11 December 2024
⏱️ 25 minutes
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Summary
Two years ago, President Biden and congressional Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act, aimed at stimulating clean energy production and reducing carbon emissions. Since then, hundreds of thousands of jobs have been created and Americans have claimed over $8 billion in tax credits to spend on climate-friendly technologies for their homes. The biggest winners have been more conservative areas, where more investments have been made because of lower tax barriers and more incentives for companies to build there. But despite this, President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to stop efforts to boost clean energy, calling it the “green new scam.”
“Post Reports” co-host Elahe Izadi speaks with reporter Maxine Joselow about how he could do this and what the lasting effects of the Inflation Reduction Act might be.
Today’s show was produced by Sabby Robinson with help from Elana Gordon. It was mixed by Justin Gerrish and edited by Lucy Perkins with help from Maggie Penman. Thank you also to Roger Hodge.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Over the past two years, there have been massive investments in clean energy projects across the U.S. |
| 0:10.7 | The largest solar investment in U.S. history is headed to Dalton, Georgia. |
| 0:16.1 | It's making a huge investment there. |
| 0:18.4 | The solar manufacturing company, Q.Sels is investing $2.5 billion. |
| 0:23.6 | State of North Carolina is experiencing a green energy boom. A new investment in the clean |
| 0:28.9 | energy by the federal government will go towards projects in Nevada. $20 million will go towards |
| 0:34.2 | lowering the cost of drilling for geothermal energy. These efforts are directly tied to President Biden's historic law to fight climate change, |
| 0:42.7 | the Inflation Reduction Act. |
| 0:46.2 | Many people hear Inflation Reduction Act and think it has to do with inflation |
| 0:50.8 | and don't realize it's actually the largest climate change legislation |
| 0:54.6 | in U.S. history. |
| 0:55.9 | Maxine Jossalo reports on climate change and U.S. climate policy for the Post. |
| 1:00.3 | She says this law has already had tangible impacts on communities across the country. |
| 1:05.9 | And there are sort of two main ways that I think about this. |
| 1:09.0 | One is in terms of consumers who are getting some pretty |
| 1:12.7 | generous tax credits when they buy climate-friendly technologies such as electric vehicles, |
| 1:18.8 | rooftop solar panels, heat pumps. And then the second way is in terms of companies, whether |
| 1:24.6 | you're an automaker or a big oil and gas company, you're really being |
| 1:29.1 | incentivized to build factories to manufacture those climate-friendly technologies here in the |
| 1:33.9 | United States. Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 without any support from |
| 1:40.3 | Republicans. Now, Republicans are about to control the House and the Senate. President-elect |
| 1:46.0 | Trump is reentering the White House, and the fate of this law is in question. |
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