Understanding the Impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act

The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) represents a major effort to invest in clean energy technology and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The long-term impacts of the act, though, are difficult to trace, simply because the scope of the new incentives and programs is so large.

Now, new research finds that the IRA could get the U.S. a lot closer to meeting its goals under the Paris Agreement, which aims to keep global warming below 2°C from pre-industrial levels. The IRA can’t completely close the gap between promises and action, however. In 2030, the U.S. will still likely fall between 0.5 gigatons (GT) and 1.1 GT of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e) per year short of its net emissions goals.

The new study integrates and contrasts across nine different models of the IRA’s impacts, six of which focus on the entire U.S. economy and three of which focus in detail on the power sector. Comparing multiple models gives the opportunity to see which predictions are robust across models and which are more uncertain, claims the study’s lead author John Bistline, a program manager in the Energy Systems and Climate Analysis Group at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), an independent nonprofit energy R&D organization. In areas where the models disagree, you get a sense of the magnitude of that disagreement, Bistline adds.