Clean Electricity Tax Credits in the Inflation Reduction Act Will Reduce Emissions, Grow Jobs, and Lower Bills

On August 16, 2022, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) into law. The IRA provides $369 billion in strategic investment to promote clean energy and climate justice. This includes more than $100 billion in clean electricity tax incentives, which will lower the cost of developing clean energy projects, and more than $20 billion in clean electricity loans, grants, research funding, procurement, and other programs to support transmission and planning.

NRDC analyzed the potential energy, emissions, and economic benefits of the IRA’s clean electricity credits, and found that they can grow renewable and low-carbon resources by leaps and bounds, lower energy costs for Americans, create thousands of new jobs, create a cleaner grid, and reduce health-harming air pollution.

Specifically, these enhanced clean electricity tax credits can:

• Help double the amount of renewable, storage, and other low-carbon capacity on the grid by 2030 and nearly quadruple capacity by 2035, relative to today’s levels—the fastest and most sustained build-out of renewables and other clean electricity resources in U.S. history.
• Lower energy costs for Americans and businesses, saving U.S. households $60 billion on electricity bills over the next 15 years (2021$).
• Create a cleaner grid, cutting power sector carbon pollution by 66 percent from 2005 levels by the end of this decade.
• Slash health-harming air pollution, delivering $9 billion in public health benefits annually by 2030 and a cumulative public health benefit of almost $75 billion over the next 15 years.