https://archive.md/X8XjU
"It is a good time to be in the decarbonization business in the United States.
The Inflation Reduction Act—with its $374 billion cornucopia of green
incentives, subsidies, and grants—was designed to entice private companies to
invest in the transition away from fossil fuels. Initial reports already
suggest that the IRA may be working. An analysis by American Clean Power, a
lobbying group of renewable-energy companies, indicates that even just the
anticipation of its bounty catalyzed $40 billion in investments and created
nearly 7,000 jobs in the last few months of 2022.
Things are so rosy for the green industry in the United States, in fact, that
the European Union feels left out. It is miffed that many of the IRA’s tax
breaks and subsidies apply only to American-made products, tempting European
companies to open operations here. And so now the EU has its own take on the
Inflation Reduction Act: Last week, the European Commission proposed a “Green
Deal Industrial Plan.” It includes $240 billion in loans and $21 billion in
grants from EU coffers to subsidize green businesses, a relaxation of state-aid
rules to allow member countries to offer subsidies, job training, faster
permitting for “clean technology” projects, and measures to ensure access to
“critical raw materials,” such as the lithium used in many electric-vehicle
batteries. This week, economy ministers from Germany and France are in
Washington, D.C., hoping to persuade the U.S. to allow EU-made electric cars
and batteries to qualify for subsidies.
All of this squabbling suggests that many world leaders now see the energy
transition as not only inevitable but
lucrative—a source of prosperity and
jobs. This “race to the top” approach to tackling climate change is new,
according to Jessie Jenkins, an energy-policy researcher at Princeton. “For
decades, the climate challenge has been framed as a collective-action problem,”
he told me, “a tragedy of the commons that demanded shared sacrifice.” Now,
instead of requiring sacrifice, fixing the climate is seen as having
“significant economic, security, and geostrategic benefits.” Global investment
in decarbonization surpassed $1 trillion in 2022—on par, for the first time,
with investments in fossil fuels. For longtime observers of international
climate policy, the shift feels seismic. Watching countries jockey for position
in industries that were once considered niche sideshows is “thrilling,” Alice
Hill, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told me.
The IRA itself was in large part a response to China’s global dominance in many
green industries. With the EU in the mix, the three largest economies in the
world are all trying to ride this wave. So is this it? Has decarbonization
finally gone mainstream and picked up enough momentum that it will inevitably
barrel along until the fossil-fuel industry is dead and buried? Can we all stop
worrying now?
Well, no."
Via
Future Crunch:
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-human-rights-spain/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
