Some environmental groups are already gearing up for the next stages in the battle over energy policy, arguing that Democrats’ just-passed Inflation Reduction Act isn’t sufficiently aggressive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate change.
The House of Representatives approved the Democrats’ wide-ranging tax and green energy spending bill on Friday, delivering the party’s biggest legislative win this Congress. A number of green interest groups and Democratic lawmakers have marked it as the largest investment in green energy in U.S. history, albeit a compromised version of the more expansive Build Back Better Act passed by the House last year.
Yet before President Joe Biden took his pen to sign the bill into law, some began putting pressure on him to make up for the bill’s perceived weaknesses and do more to restrict fossil fuels.
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The legislation includes hundreds of billions in tax credits, grants, and other incentives for renewable energy technologies and to support their domestic manufacture, as well as credits for zero-emissions vehicles and funding for pollution reduction programs.
It also includes major concessions favoring the oil and gas industry, including requirements that the Interior Department reverse course to carry out three offshore oil and gas lease sales it canceled in May, and would make renewable energy permitting on federal lands contingent on oil and gas leasing.
Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, said Friday that the act takes important steps to promote clean energy but called the fossil fuel provisions “an unconscionable trade-off” for Democrats to make. The bill “can only be seen as the beginning of our response to the climate crisis,” she said.
Hauter also took aim at another piece of the overarching deal between Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, which is to reform the federal environmental review and permitting process to approve various infrastructure projects more speedily, such as roads, wind farms, and natural gas pipelines.
“Our focus now must shift to stopping Sen. Manchin’s awful ‘side deal’ to fast-track fossil fuel permitting,” Hauter said.
The leasing language and permitting reforms, which are being planned to follow in separate legislation, were among the compromises necessary to secure the support of Manchin, who dissents from the more popular position within his party favoring new restrictions on the oil and gas industry.
Manchin and a handful of his more centrist colleagues have urged the Biden administration to support domestic oil and gas production on federal lands more actively, both to bring down fuel prices over time and to strengthen the country’s independence from foreign energy sources.
For some other environmental groups, the oil and gas provisions didn’t spoil the bill, but they emphasized nonetheless that the Biden administration will have to step up and be more aggressive about reducing emissions.
The Climate Action Campaign, a coalition of multiple environmental and public health groups, called the Inflation Reduction Act “the largest investment ever in climate, communities, clean energy, and jobs.” But, it said, after the bill becomes law, America “will still need President Biden to put the full weight of the federal government” behind policies to reduce emissions further.
Biden’s ideal is for the United States to reduce economywide greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50%, relative to 2005 levels, in 2030. Democratic leadership estimates that the act can achieve 40% in that time frame, meaning separate actions from federal and state governments would likely be necessary to make up the difference.
The comments from green groups reflect the pressures Democrats face from their environmentalist constituencies to be ever more aggressive in working on cutting reliance on traditional energy sources.
Reducing fossil fuel use is a guiding light Biden shares with many such groups, but the global energy crisis has made messaging and policymaking to that end more difficult.
For example, the White House has called on domestic and foreign energy producers to bring more oil to market to lower gas prices in the near term while still arguing in favor of a shift away from fossil fuels over the longer term.
However, Biden promised on the campaign trail to restrict leasing and drilling on public lands and waters, something a number of Democrats in Congress also support, all of which makes the legislation’s oil and gas provisions meaningful concessions.
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Leading Democrats were largely content on Friday to relish the victory of passing their bill and save the next steps for another day.
“Bold and aggressive climate action is needed now, and that’s why we are here today,” said Frank Pallone, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “The Inflation Reduction Act tackles the climate crisis and protects our communities from its devastating impacts.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Friday a “glorious” day for Democrats.
