Emissions and energy impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act

If goals set under the Paris Agreement are met, the world may hold warming well below 2°C; however, parties are not on track to deliver these commitments, increasing focus on policy implementation to close the gap between ambition and action. Recently, the US government passed its most prominent piece of climate legislation to date—the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA)—designed to invest in a wide range of programs that, among other provisions, incentivize clean energy and carbon management, encourage electrification and efficiency measures, reduce methane emissions, promote domestic supply chains, and address environmental justice concerns. IRA’s scope and complexity make modeling important to understand impacts on emissions and energy systems. The authors leverage results from nine independent, state-of-the-art models to examine potential implications of key IRA provisions, showing economy-wide emissions reductions between 43 and 48% below 2005 levels by 2035.

Emissions and energy impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act
John Bistline, Geoffrey Blanford, Maxwell Brown, Dallas Burtraw, Maya Domeshek, Jamil Farbes, Allen Fawcett, Anne Hamilton, Jesse Jenkins, Ryan Jones, Ben King, Hannah Kolus, John Larsen, Amanda Levin, Megan Mahajan, Cara Marcy, Erin Mayfield, James Mcfarland, Haewon Mcjeon, Robbie Orvis, Neha Patankar, Kevin Rennert, Christopher Roney, Nicholas Roy, Greg Schivley, Daniel Steinberg, Nadejda Victor, Shelley Wenzel, John Weyant, Ryan Wiser, Mei Yuan, And Alicia Zhao, Science, 29 Jun 2023, Vol 380, Issue 6652, pp. 1324-1327