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President Joe Bidens Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) bill was a landmark move for the economy. One year after it was signed into law, it had already created more than 170,600 clean energy jobs and spurred private companies to announce at least 210 major new clean energy and clean vehicle projects across 39 states, representing more than $86 billion in investments. Now the House Republicans reconciliation bill is poised to also have a drastic impact on the economy and clean energy landscape, but by gutting the IRA’s gains. Instead of fostering jobs and clean energy development, the billwhich passed the House this week and has now moved to the Senatecould erase those monumental investments and lead to fewer jobs, reduced clean energy capacity, and a drop in the national GDP. The GOPs big, beautiful bill will increase some things, experts say, like Americans household expenses; it will also give tax benefits to billionaires. House Republicans just voted to jack up prices, kill jobs, and rip away basic lifelines from working families by taking a sledgehammer to programs and investments that make life more affordable, Lena Moffitt, executive director of the nonprofit Evergreen Action, said in a statement. If passed into law, Americans will wake up to find the GOP quietly reached into their wallets and handed their hard-earned cash to corporate polluters and billionaires like Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Heres a look at the impact of the Republican reconciliation bill by the numbers, specifically around jobs, clean energy, and household costs. The GOPs reconciliation bill could cost the U.S. more than 830,000 jobs in 2030, according to an analysis from Energy Innovation. (That includes both direct job cuts from less EV production and clean energy manufacturing, as well as indirect losses from higher fuel costs and other economic impacts.) It would also lead to less new electricity generation, especially at a time when electricity demand is growing. Over the next four years, the bill would decrease additions to new electricity capacity by 302 gigawatts. Thats the same power capacity that the entire U.S. coal fleet had a decade ago. For context, 1 gigawatt can power 100 million LED light bulbs. With less new electricity being generated, wholesale power prices will increase about 50% by 2035, particularly because solar and wind are cheaper energy sources than fossil fuels. Across all American households, consumer energy costs will increase by more than $16 billion in 2030, and by more than $33 billion by 2035. This increase happens even if oil and gas production rise and help reduce fossil fuel prices, as envisioned by the bill, Energy Innovation notes. Between 2026 and 2034, the bill would cumulatively reduce the national GDP by nearly $1.1 trillion. For individual households, that could mean a $110 increase to electricity costs per year, beginning in 2026, which could then rise to $290 more in annual energy costs per household by 2035. The GOP bill will drive up household costs for Americans in other ways, too. The price of gasoline will increase between 25 and 37 cents per gallon, which, on the higher end, would mean more than $200 per year for the average gas vehicle. Without the IRAs EV tax credits, Americans will also essentially see the cost of electric vehicles go up by at least $7,500 (and for used EVs, $4,000). The Republican bill also eliminates a tax credit for energy-efficient home improvements like heat pumps and water heaters. That credit has so far allowed households to save up to $990 each year on their utility bills, but Americans will now miss out on those savings. The bill has broader impacts on emissions and how climate change will worsen. Without tax credits to spur investments in clean energy and efficient appliances, the bill could increase greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 130 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent in 2030like adding 30 million gas-powered cars to the road for one year. By 2035, that could grow to nearly 260 million metric tons, equivalent to the annual energy use of nearly 35 million homesor the entire annual CO2 emissions from Spain. With more emissions and air pollution come more deaths. According to Energy Innovation, that could mean nearly 350 additional premature deaths annually by 2030, and nearly 670 more every year by 2035. Many of these impacts will be concentrated in Republican states. The IRA was a huge boon to Republican districts: In just two years, it added nearly 200,000 clean energy jobs and more than $286 billion in clean energy investments to congressional districts represented by Republican House members. Now those districts will likely see job losses and less economic investment because of their Republican representatives’ votes. In their crusade to rig the system for their fossil fuel backers,” Moffitt said prior to the House bill passing, “its people living in Trump statestheir own voterswho will pay the steepest price: lost jobs, higher energy costs, and missed economic opportunities.”
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Four years ago, GM set an audacious goal: By 2035, the automaker planned to go all-electric. The company says its still aiming for that target. But it simultaneously lobbied the Senate to end Californias ban on new gas car saleswhich was also supposed to go fully into effect in 2035. In theory, California’s policy should have supported GM’s transition. GM even recruited employees in the lobbying effort. We need your help! the company wrote in an email to staff, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. Emissions standards that are not aligned with market realities pose a serious threat to our business by undermining consumer choice and vehicle affordability. The lobbying worked. Yesterday, the Senate voted to revoke an Environmental Protection Agency waiver that allowed California to set clean air rules that are stricter than national standards. (Congress arguably didnt have the legal right to revoke the waiver; more on that later.) In a statement, the company said, “GM appreciates Congress action to align emissions standards with todays market realities. We have long advocated for one national standard that will allow us to stay competitive, continue to invest in U.S. innovation, and offer customer choice across the broadest lineup of gas-powered and electric vehicles. [Photo: GM] GM CEO Mary Barra has said that the company believes in an all-electric future. The company, which began seriously investing in battery design in 2018, spent $11 billion on EV infrastructure between 2020 and 2024. It has a massive battery factory, co-owned with LG Energy, near Nashville, and another in Ohio, making thousands of battery cells per minute. Its racing to bring down the cost of batteries, the biggest factor in the overall cost of EVs. In the first quarter of this year, GM sold 31,887 EVs in the U.S., a 94% increase over its electric vehicle sales in the same period last year. Its now the second-largest seller of EVs in the U.S., quickly gaining on Tesla. The company plans to nearly double the number of EVs it makes this year compared to last. It has 11 models on the market, including the Chevy Equinox EV, currently the most affordable EV in the country. The popular Chevy Bolt, another affordable EV, will come back later this year. But the company argues that California’s clean car rule is moving faster than market demand. The rule sets targets that automakers have to hit each year. For model year 2026 cars, 35% of a manufacturer’s car sales in the state have to be zero-emission, or the manufacturer has to pay a fine. The target jumps up to 43% in 2027, 51% in 2028, and keeps going until new cars are 100% zero-emission by 2035. Last year, in California, around 25% of new cars registered in the state were electric. This year, as many buyers have veered away from Tesla, the percentage of EV sales could drop. GM declined to comment on whether it expects to hit the 35% target for model year 2026 cars in the state. [Photo: GM] Other states have followed California’s regulation, with the same annual targets: Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington. Those states have even lower percentages of EV sales now. Car companies say it would be unrealistic for them to immediately meet the targets for model year 2026 that those states require. Critics argue that if demand is lower than expected, automakers themselves bear some responsibility. “That’s like the kid who says, ‘Look, I didn’t study for the test, and it’s unfair that you’re giving me a bad grade,'” says Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Transport Campaign at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, noting that GM has the best engineers in the world. They know how to make vehicles that meet standards and that are attractive to consumers. And they’ve chosen not to market their electric vehicles. . . . The auto industry in the United States spends $14 billion a year on advertising and other marketing. Very little of that goes to advertising electric vehicles.” EVs are facing other major challenges. The House just voted to phase out the $7,500 tax credits to buy or lease new EVs (companies that have not yet sold 200,000 EVs will be able to continue to qualify for the credits until the end of 2026; GM has already passed that limit). The House bill also ends a $4,000 tax credit for used cars that was introduced in the Inflation Reduction Act, and another tax credit for home chargers. Since EVs haven’t quite reached price parity with gas cars, the tax credits are crucial. Car companies are also facing steep costs from tariffs. A GM spokesperson said on background that the California rules could cost the company billions at a time when profits are already being squeezed by tariffsand that’s money that the company needs to continue to be able to invest in EV development to bring costs down. GM is still losing money making EVs, though costs are decreasing as production scales up and the technology continues to advance. The Senate vote on California isn’t definitive. The Senate parliamentarian ruled that Congress didn’t have the authority to overturn the waiver that allows California to make its own clean air rules. Waivers aren’t included in the Congressional Review Act, the law that the Senate used to revoke the waiver. (The CRA allows Congress to overturn recent laws with a simple majority vote; the waiver was also granted in 2022 and arguably would also not be considered recent.) “Congress doesn’t get to amend [laws] along the way by saying, ‘Oh, well, we really meant it to be this,” sys Becker. “It’s a Pandora’s box that they’re opening. If the CRA isn’t limited to rules, then you’ve opened the door as to what can be undone by the congressional actioncorporate mergers that are allowed by the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission], cost-of-living adjustments by different agencies, offshore drilling permitswho knows how this will ultimately be used. And the Republicans will not always be in charge.” California could potentially sue. “That will result in uncertainty for the industry,” Becker says. “They keep saying they want certainty. And they’re getting rid of it by demanding that Congress use an illegal mechanism to undo protections for people with lungs.” Meanwhile, EVs are growing faster outside the United States. Globally, more than one in four cars sold this year is likely to be an EV. In China, more than half of new car sales last year were all-electric. In Norway, 97% of all cars sold last month were electric. As federal support reverses in the U.S., American automakers will fall behind.
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In December 2022, Matthew Boyer hopped on an Argentine military plane to one of the more remote habitations on Earth: Marambio Station at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, where the icy continent stretches toward South America. Months before that, Boyer had to ship expensive, delicate instruments that might get busted by the time he landed. When you arrive, you have boxes that have been sometimes sitting outside in Antarctica for a month or two in a cold warehouse, said Boyer, a PhD student in atmospheric science at the University of Helsinki. And were talking about sensitive instrumentation. But the effort paid off, because Boyer and his colleagues found something peculiar about penguin guano. In a paper published on Thursday in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, they describe how ammonia wafting off the droppings of 60,000 birds contributed to the formation of clouds that might be insulating Antarctica, helping cool down an otherwise rapidly warming continent. Some penguin populations, however, are under serious threat because of climate change. Losing them and their guano could mean fewer clouds and more heating in an already fragile ecosystem, one so full of ice that it will significantly raise sea levels worldwide as it melts. A better understanding of this dynamic could help scientists hone their models of how Antarctica will transform as the world warms. They can now investigate, for instance, if some penguin species produce more ammonia and, therefore, more of a cooling effect. Thats the impact of this paper, said Tamara Russell, a marine ornithologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who studies penguins but wasnt involved in the research. That will inform the models better, because we know that some species are decreasing, some are increasing, and thats going to change a lot down there in many different ways. With their expensive instruments, Boyer and his research team measured atmospheric ammonia between January and March 2023, summertime in the southern hemisphere. They found that when the wind was blowing from an Adelie penguin colony 5 miles away from the detectors, concentrations of the gas shot up to 1,000 times higher than the baseline. Even when the penguins had moved out of the colony after breeding, ammonia concentrations remained elevated for at least a month, as the guano continued emitting the gas. That atmospheric ammonia could have been helping cool the area. The researchers further demonstrated that the ammonia kicks off an atmospheric chain reaction. Out at sea, tiny plantlike organisms known as phytoplankton release the gas dimethyl sulfide, which transforms into sulphuric acid in the atmosphere. Because ammonia is a base, it reacts readily with this acid. This coupling results in the rapid formation of aerosol particles. Clouds form when water vapor gloms onto any number of different aerosols, like soot and pollen, floating around in the atmosphere. In populated places, these particles are more abundant, because industries and vehicles emit so many of them as pollutants. Trees and other vegetation spew aerosols, too. But because Antarctica lacks trees and doesnt have much vegetation at all, the aerosols from penguin guano and phytoplankton can make quite an impact. In February 2023, Boyer and the other researchers measured a particularly strong burst of particles associated with guano, sampled a resulting fog a few hours later, and found particles created by the interaction of ammonia from the guano and sulphuric acid from the plankton. There is a deep connection between these ecosystem processes, between penguins and phytoplankton at the ocean surface, Boyer said. Their gas is all interacting to form these particles and clouds. But heres where the climate impacts get a bit trickier. Scientists know that in general, clouds cool Earths climate by reflecting some of the suns energy back into space. Although Boyer and his team hypothesize that clouds enhanced with penguin ammonia are probably helping cool this part of Antarctica, they note that they didnt quantify that climate effect, which would require further research. Thats a critical bit of information because of the potential for the warming climate to create a feedback loop. As oceans heat up, penguins are losing access to some of their prey, and colonies are shrinking or disappearing as a result. Fewer penguins producing guano means less ammonia and fewer clouds, which means more warming and more disruptions to the animals, and on and on in a self-reinforcing cycle. If this paper is correctand it really seems to be a nice piece of work to me[theres going to be] a feedback effect, where its going to accelerate the changes that are already pushing change in the penguins, said Peter Roopnarine, curator of geology at the California Academy of Sciences. Scientists might now look elsewhere, Roopnarine adds, to find other bird colonies that could also be providing cloud cover. Protecting those species from pollution and hunting would be a natural way to engineer Earth systems to offset some planetary warming. We think its for the sake of the birds, Roopnarine said. Well, obviously it goes well beyond that. By Matt Simon, Grist This article was originally published by Grist, a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Sign up for its newsletter here.
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