Ali Rogin:
The Inflation Reduction Act or IRA signed by President Biden back in 2022 invest close to $370 billion to combat climate change, and to date, there's been more than $100 billion in private investment and roughly 100,000 new jobs created in clean energy manufacturing.
Together, the IRA and its companion bill, the CHIPS Act, offer more than $400 billion in funds focused on jump starting manufacturing industry, reducing emissions and providing cleaner electricity to the economy.
But a mammoth undertaking like this is not without obstacles, worsening market conditions, overproduction in China and uncertainty in the 2024 U.S. presidential election are putting up roadblocks for a number of these projects.
According to analysis by the Financial Times newspaper, 40 percent of major IRA manufacturing projects have been delayed or paused indefinitely. Jack Conness is a policy analyst at Energy Innovation Policy and Technology, a nonpartisan research and analysis firm. Jack, thank you so much for being here.
So we're two years into the IRA you've been tracking these projects. What do we know?
Jack Conness, Policy Analyst, Energy Innovation Policy and Technology: The inflation Reduction Act has signaled to the private market that the U.S. clean energy economy is open for business. What I've tracked are investments and jobs in batteries, electric vehicles, solar and wind manufacturing projects.
Up to this point, a majority of investments in jobs have been seen in battery and electric vehicles, while most of the remaining jobs and investments are in solar manufacturing. All this has led to the US taking a leadership role at a global scale when it comes to a clean energy future.
Jack Conness:
So you can't turn a billion dollar factory on overnight. The scale of these projects is massive, but there's a contextual way I think about it. Let's say you're walking around your neighborhood and you see a new home or an apartment building under construction. It feels like you can walk by it for weeks or months or even a year and see little progress being made, but eventually it gets built, and we've built millions of houses over hundreds of years, and it's a pretty standardized process.
So as we embrace clean energy technologies and a new prosperous economic future, these projects will become more standardized and efficient over time. So when we look at some of these quote, unquote delays, some are just a few months or even a year.
So let's say we had a project that was pushed from 2024 into 2025, it's inconsequential when you consider these projects will impact local communities and state and federal outcomes for decades into the future.
Jack Conness:
Yeah. So to your point, I mean, the marketplace loves certainty. The private marketplace loves certainty. It's the most important thing businesses seek when making investments, especially ones that involve hundreds of millions or billions of dollars.
So in this instance, for you know, we're talking about policy certainty, which is strong because the Inflation Reduction Act incentives are in place for 10 years. That gives the private market an incredible decade long opportunity to invest in clean energy future and create tens of thousands of good paying American jobs.
But policy uncertainty is the other side of the coin, which is what businesses loathe and what causes them to pause on making large new investments.
Jack Conness:
Yeah. So one of the beautiful things about the Inflation Reduction Act is it — is just a signal to the private market to engage in a clean energy economy. It doesn't pick winners, it doesn't pick losers, and it certainly does not pick where these investments will take place.
So the private market has come in and has made their decisions on their own internal checklists on where to make these investments across the country, and what we've seen up to this point are a number of investments made in what are traditionally red or purple states.
We've seen a number of lawmakers across the political spectrum embrace these announcements. We've seen significant announcements made in places like Georgia and South Carolina, which, again, are traditionally either more red or purple states, but they've been the recipients of some of the largest investments up to this point. So we're really seeing an embrace of clean energy technology in states that are traditionally voting, you know, on the right side of the aisle.
