WASHINGTON - The United States government will spend an estimated US$514 billion on climate technology and clean energy over the next decade under three recently enacted laws, an analysis by non-profit RMI found.and last year's Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Together they fund climate-related research and pilot studies and support manufacturing.
"Together they form a coherent green industrial policy, in the sense that there are strategic industries that they focus on and a set of tools designed to accelerate production up and down the supply chain," said Mr Lachlan Carey, co-author of the report, published on Monday . The US$514 billion total includes US$362 billion from the IRA, US$98 billion from the infrastructure act and US$54 billion from the bipartisan-supported CHIPS law, although Congress will have to pass further legislation for some of the funding to be released.The CHIPS bill, for instance, will fund climate-related efforts in materials science such as developing new battery chemistry and more efficient solar panels.
Annual federal spending on climate and clean energy over the next five years will be roughly 15 times that of the 1990s and early 2000s and about triple that of recent years, the study said.But study authors said climate action needed to speed up. "It's a long process that we don't have time to be that long. Like solar and wind took 40 years - we have 10 years," said Ms Jun Shepard, another co-author.