Workers install solar panels at the Port of Los Angeles in California.
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Mario Tama / Getty Images
Workers install solar panels at the Port of Los Angeles in California.
Mario Tama / Getty Images
The United States is poised to make much deeper cuts to the pollution that is driving global warming than it did a few years ago. That’s largely due to the billions of dollars the nation is spending on green technologies through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which Congressional Democrats passed last summer, according to a new report from Rhodium Corporation.
The research firm says that by 2030, the United States could reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 29% to 42% from 2005 levels of pollution. At the start of the Biden administration, Rhodium Group analysts said it looked like the country would only be able to cut emissions by about a quarter, best. The changing outlook reflects the expectation that massive federal government investments will make things like renewable energy and electric vehicles far more affordable.
But major roadblocks still stand in the way. Companies that build wind and solar power plants often struggling to get projects allowed by the local government because public protest. And have long queue to plug power plants and batteries into the country’s grid. To make the kinds of emissions cuts that the Rhodium Corporation thinks is possible, the United States will have to at least achieve its best year ever for wind and solar power, and it will have to do it every year.
And even if all goes well, it won’t be enough to deliver on the commitment the United States made under the 2015 Paris Agreement to cut emissions in half by the end of the decade. Achieving that goal will require even more drastic action by states and the federal government, the Rhodium Group said.
“You’re going to need to figure out how to generate a whole bunch of wind and solar power, put a bunch of electric vehicles on the road and the like,” said Ben King, the company’s vice president of energy and climate.
“The IRA is the push, the economic push you need, and you just have to clear the way for it and not let it get too much of a hitch,” King adds.
A recent United Nations report has warned that the world is running out of time to prevent temperatures from rising to potentially catastrophic levels in many places. The Earth is now nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it was in the late 1800s, and is on track to warm more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. according to the UN In addition to about 2.8 degrees Fahrenheit of warming, hurricanes, heat waves, and other phenomena climate impacts become much more destructive.
Limiting the rise in global temperatures will require an international response. Aiguo Dai, a professor of atmospheric and environmental sciences at the University of Albany, said that as the nation’s largest contributor in history to climate change, the United States “needs to lead that effort.”
“If the United States can start cutting emissions, steadily every year, every decade, then we’re on track to limit global warming,” Dai said.
However, scientists say time is of the essence. At the current slow pace, countries are cutting emissions, warming is on track activating the flee effect could lead to permanent changes in the Earth’s ecosystem.
“If we cut it too [slowly]catastrophic warming is unlikely in the near future,” Dai said.
