In announcing the new agreement, Schumer asserted that the legislation “puts the U.S on a path to roughly 40% emissions reductions by 2030.” And experts agree the bill could be a game changer in cutting the nation’s emissions in the coming years, helping to curtail warming and extreme weather events in the coming decades.
What’s in the bill?
In a word, billions. The bill includes hundreds of billions in grants, loans, federal procurements and tax credits for research and development, deployment, and manufacturing across clean energy, transportation, and other sectors like agriculture.
“This is the transformative clean energy and climate rescue package that we’ve been waiting for,” said Leah Stokes, an environmental policy professor at University of California Berkeley who has been advising Democrats on climate legislation, in an interview.
One major bucket for spending in the bill is in deploying clean energy projects: there’s roughly $30 billion in new tax credits for building wind, solar, and other clean energy projects, as well as extensions for existing credits. There’s also $60 billion in incentives for domestic manufacturing of everything from batteries to solar panels to heat pumps.
The bill also increases subsidies enough to possibly make it economical for some fossil fuel and industrial plants to add equipment that prevents climate pollution, increasing the potential role of what’s known as carbon capture and storage.
The bill includes $27 billion for clean technology research and development, as well as $2 billion specifically for research at national laboratories.
Other sectors will see support for cutting emissions, too. Some $20 billion is earmarked to help cut emissions from agriculture and there’s nearly $5 billion in grants for forest conservation and restoration projects.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, director of the climate and energy program at Third Way, said it’s an ambitious and politically pragmatic bill designed to boost US manufacturing, provide support where job sectors are shifting, and build out the infrastructure needed to shift to cleaner, modern energy systems.