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The IRA’s clean-energy progress is clearest in our communities
Stephen Smith is executive director of Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. He was a founder of the Foundation for Global Sustainability (FGS) and serves on the FGS board of directors. Hellbender Press is published by FGS.
KNOXVILLE — The largest climate investment legislation in U.S. history, the Inflation Reduction Act, celebrated its two-year anniversary in August: two years of reducing harmful pollution, of creating thousands of good-paying clean energy jobs, of welcoming billions of dollars in clean energy investments to the Southeast. The ways the IRA has and will continue to benefit our region and beyond are innumerable — and the numbers don’t lie.
The IRA’s progress is clearest here in our communities: between Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, 559,820 households received more than $1.3 billion in residential clean energy and energy-efficiency tax credits in tax year 2023. Real people are saving money and benefiting from the historic climate law every day — take it from seven SACE members, their IRA stories and the encouraging statistics mentioned here.
The reach of the IRA stretches beyond our homes — over 70,000 electric vehicle (EV) charging stations now dot the U.S., and federal tax credits on both new and used EVs have saved consumers over $1 billion so far this year alone. Last month, SACE released its updated 2024 Electrify the South Electric Transportation Toolkit to help guide decision-makers through this time of enormous opportunity.
More and more every day, it becomes obvious that the clean energy future we envision already surrounds us: in our homes, on our roads and even in our schools. This is what we can expect when we learn to put protecting the climate and our communities first.
Unfortunately, that sentiment isn’t yet so strongly embraced by our region’s utility providers, who continue to produce the power we depend on by burning fossil fuels like coal and methane. Despite how easy it can be to forget the source of our electricity when all we have to do is flip on a light switch, many communities are forced to be aware of our electricity’s dirty roots, like in rural Person County, North Carolina, where Duke Energy is proposing to build a methane gas plant dangerously close to an elementary school.
Striking a balance between celebrating success and not counting our chickens before they’ve hatched can be tough; the juxtaposition between IRA progress and utility hesitation can be exhausting. As we celebrate how far we’ve come in these last two years, we thank people who pushed to pass this historic climate plan, and we invite you to help keep the momentum going by joining hundreds of us from across the Southeast working as one Clean Energy Generation to hold utilities and elected leaders accountable and protect crucial climate legislation like the IRA. Together, we have the power to impact statistics like these — to ensure a safer, brighter future for all.
