Did the IRA meet its climate goals?
March 13, 2024 1:54 PM Subscribe
A conversation between environmental modeler Trevor House and journalist David Roberts. TLDR: did what it said on the tin Economic and environment models have come a long way and can now provide real- time assessment and predictions for proposed legislation.
Analysis: Donald Trump election win could add 4bn tonnes to US emissions by 2030
posted by Rhaomi at 2:04 PM on March 13 [6 favorites]
[non-American reading] oh right, not *that* IRA
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 2:16 PM on March 13 [47 favorites]
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 2:16 PM on March 13 [47 favorites]
What it literally said on the tin was "Inflation Reduction Act". Which is an entirely misleading label. I like Biden's legislation and its funding for technologies to avert climate change but I hate this kind of political naming stunt.
The small part of the IRA I'm enjoying seeing come to fruition is the $7.5B for our EV charging network. Purely selfishly; I drive an EV and want reliable places to charge!
posted by Nelson at 2:35 PM on March 13 [4 favorites]
The small part of the IRA I'm enjoying seeing come to fruition is the $7.5B for our EV charging network. Purely selfishly; I drive an EV and want reliable places to charge!
posted by Nelson at 2:35 PM on March 13 [4 favorites]
[non-American reading] oh right, not *that* IRA
I am an American, and that was my first read on it, too.
posted by The Manwich Horror at 2:36 PM on March 13 [13 favorites]
I am an American, and that was my first read on it, too.
posted by The Manwich Horror at 2:36 PM on March 13 [13 favorites]
For an article about climate goals it sure spends a lot of time talking about solar panels and cars and heat pumps, while almost pointedly avoiding talking about actual emissions. Probably because last year emissions fell all of 2%, and that decrease was largely the result not of renewables or electric vehicles, but of coal being replaced by natural gas. Meanwhile the US is now extracting "more crude oil than any nation at any time", much of it destined for export where those carbon emissions are safely out of sight as far as US accounting is concerned. So for me at least the question is, exactly when in the not-so-many years between now and 2030 or 2035 do these hypothetical 40% emissions reductions happen?
posted by Pyry at 4:21 PM on March 13 [5 favorites]
posted by Pyry at 4:21 PM on March 13 [5 favorites]
There really aren't any conversations about climate change that involve taking the really, truly drastic steps that will be needed, have been needed for decades. We're just going to incrementally step our carbon burning down while our world incrementally steps its temperature up and I will die and then I won't worry about this anymore.
I'm sorry about the kiddos. I'd do things more drastically, even to the point of tanking the global economy, to stop carbon burning. But I'm not in charge.
posted by hippybear at 4:32 PM on March 13 [1 favorite]
I'm sorry about the kiddos. I'd do things more drastically, even to the point of tanking the global economy, to stop carbon burning. But I'm not in charge.
posted by hippybear at 4:32 PM on March 13 [1 favorite]
exactly when in the not-so-many years between now and 2030 or 2035 do these hypothetical 40% emissions reductions happen?
Never. They happen never. I don’t think that we even get to zero in the year-on-year increase. At least not before things start falling apart, which undoubtedly will have a reductive effect after a while. Not like it will matter at that point.
Individual countries might claim that they are reducing. But the embodied emissions in the food and goods they import put the lie to that. They’ve delegated the emissions so it looks good on their books, and to get the other aspects of the pollution happening in somebody else’s back yard too.
posted by notoriety public at 4:37 PM on March 13 [1 favorite]
Never. They happen never. I don’t think that we even get to zero in the year-on-year increase. At least not before things start falling apart, which undoubtedly will have a reductive effect after a while. Not like it will matter at that point.
Individual countries might claim that they are reducing. But the embodied emissions in the food and goods they import put the lie to that. They’ve delegated the emissions so it looks good on their books, and to get the other aspects of the pollution happening in somebody else’s back yard too.
posted by notoriety public at 4:37 PM on March 13 [1 favorite]
Individual countries might claim that they are reducing. But the embodied emissions in the food and goods they import put the lie to that.
Do you have data to back this up? Because it's certainly true that embodied emissions can be important, they generally are not as significant as people make them out to be. It easy to dismiss the very real emissions reductions in a number of European countries — and that makes it all the easier to dismiss the possibility of making significant emissions reductions in the rest of the rich world.
posted by ssg at 8:19 PM on March 13 [1 favorite]
Do you have data to back this up? Because it's certainly true that embodied emissions can be important, they generally are not as significant as people make them out to be. It easy to dismiss the very real emissions reductions in a number of European countries — and that makes it all the easier to dismiss the possibility of making significant emissions reductions in the rest of the rich world.
posted by ssg at 8:19 PM on March 13 [1 favorite]
I'm a big fan of this podcast and recommend it to those people I think care about how the future starts to happen. The experts on the show help me understand how much is being done to change the future.
posted by rebent at 8:27 PM on March 13 [2 favorites]
posted by rebent at 8:27 PM on March 13 [2 favorites]
Do you have data to back this up?
Not the original commenter but there has been some serious research put into this. The term of art is TBEET - "Technology-adjusted balance of emissions embodied in trade" -- which is a concept for differentiating and embodying the 3 factors of emissions.
1. What emissions are incurred for local consumption
2. What emissions are incurred for foreign consumption
3. How efficient the nations are at producing output - high CO2 emissions might simply mean inefficiency rather than actual trade volumes.
The TLDR is that even accounting for these factors, it doesn't change the picture much: the biggest outsourcers of CO2 are the US (about +11%) and Australia (about +8%) while the biggest insourcers of CO2 are China and Russia, at about -6%, while the rest of the world is mostly neutral.
As a first approximation, the fact that most of the world is neutral makes sense because countries need to balance imports with exports, and every kind of manufactured import or export produces emissions.
Australia is an outlier because certain export sectors (tertiary education and mining) produce lower emissions than average, while it has outsourced much of its emissions intensive manufacturing to its cheaper Asian neighbours. This is actually a rather unique situation, as Australia's economic complexity is ranked similar to Uganda and Pakistan - we don't actually do very much, it's either digging stuff out of the ground, growing things, or teaching people. Most countries would need to manufacture something for export (even a developing country like Malaysia got into hard drives and other technological goods in the late 1990s).
Under the Paris Agreement (2005) Australia committed to a reduction of 27% by 2030 against the 2005 baseline. Australia has achieved a 25% reduction to date, and has elected to update their target to a 43% reduction by 2030.
posted by xdvesper at 10:10 PM on March 13 [3 favorites]
Not the original commenter but there has been some serious research put into this. The term of art is TBEET - "Technology-adjusted balance of emissions embodied in trade" -- which is a concept for differentiating and embodying the 3 factors of emissions.
1. What emissions are incurred for local consumption
2. What emissions are incurred for foreign consumption
3. How efficient the nations are at producing output - high CO2 emissions might simply mean inefficiency rather than actual trade volumes.
The TLDR is that even accounting for these factors, it doesn't change the picture much: the biggest outsourcers of CO2 are the US (about +11%) and Australia (about +8%) while the biggest insourcers of CO2 are China and Russia, at about -6%, while the rest of the world is mostly neutral.
As a first approximation, the fact that most of the world is neutral makes sense because countries need to balance imports with exports, and every kind of manufactured import or export produces emissions.
Australia is an outlier because certain export sectors (tertiary education and mining) produce lower emissions than average, while it has outsourced much of its emissions intensive manufacturing to its cheaper Asian neighbours. This is actually a rather unique situation, as Australia's economic complexity is ranked similar to Uganda and Pakistan - we don't actually do very much, it's either digging stuff out of the ground, growing things, or teaching people. Most countries would need to manufacture something for export (even a developing country like Malaysia got into hard drives and other technological goods in the late 1990s).
Under the Paris Agreement (2005) Australia committed to a reduction of 27% by 2030 against the 2005 baseline. Australia has achieved a 25% reduction to date, and has elected to update their target to a 43% reduction by 2030.
posted by xdvesper at 10:10 PM on March 13 [3 favorites]
[non-American reading] oh right, not *that* IRA
posted by Fiasco da Gama
American here, but my brain went to the same place
posted by cnidaria at 11:22 PM on March 13 [2 favorites]
posted by Fiasco da Gama
American here, but my brain went to the same place
posted by cnidaria at 11:22 PM on March 13 [2 favorites]
exactly when in the not-so-many years between now and 2030 or 2035 do these hypothetical 40% emissions reductions happen?
Here's a Rhodium Group report that includes a chart with projections. (The Rhodium Group is the research organization that is interviewed in the OP, as well as the source for data in your NYT link.)
We're about 20% below 2005 emissions now. They are projecting current policy drops it another 10% to 20% over the next seven years, at a more or less constant rate. One can certainly be skeptical of this--I have zero feel for macro level tech/economic modeling of this sort--given better existing tech and unprecedented investment ramp up that started last year it doesn't seem impossible. I'm certainly inclined to believe that close to a trillion dollars in clean energy will make a difference in the slope of emissions reduction.
Rhodium argues Paris Accord 2030 levels (which would require a 30% drop over that period) are achievable with reasonable policies, but those are not currently implemented; net zero by 2050 is much harder.
posted by mark k at 11:36 PM on March 13 [2 favorites]
Here's a Rhodium Group report that includes a chart with projections. (The Rhodium Group is the research organization that is interviewed in the OP, as well as the source for data in your NYT link.)
We're about 20% below 2005 emissions now. They are projecting current policy drops it another 10% to 20% over the next seven years, at a more or less constant rate. One can certainly be skeptical of this--I have zero feel for macro level tech/economic modeling of this sort--given better existing tech and unprecedented investment ramp up that started last year it doesn't seem impossible. I'm certainly inclined to believe that close to a trillion dollars in clean energy will make a difference in the slope of emissions reduction.
Rhodium argues Paris Accord 2030 levels (which would require a 30% drop over that period) are achievable with reasonable policies, but those are not currently implemented; net zero by 2050 is much harder.
posted by mark k at 11:36 PM on March 13 [2 favorites]
What it literally said on the tin was "Inflation Reduction Act". Which is an entirely misleading label. I like Biden's legislation and its funding for technologies to avert climate change but I hate this kind of political naming stunt.
The wrinkle here is that the naming stunt wasn't for the public—it was for the Joe Manchins. And it worked.
As ever in politics, first choice is to get politicians to do the right thing for the right reasons, but second choice is to get them to do the right thing for the wrong reasons.
posted by migrantology at 5:54 AM on March 14 [4 favorites]
The wrinkle here is that the naming stunt wasn't for the public—it was for the Joe Manchins. And it worked.
As ever in politics, first choice is to get politicians to do the right thing for the right reasons, but second choice is to get them to do the right thing for the wrong reasons.
posted by migrantology at 5:54 AM on March 14 [4 favorites]
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