Wait, is the climate policy landscape … in better shape than it looks?
Just over a year ago, President Trump passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. It repealed many of the Biden administration’s most aggressive climate policies, including tax credits for solar and wind energy.
Although those policies are gone, the emissions cuts they achieved remain largely intact — at least in the power sector, according to a new study that we’re covering exclusively at Heatmap. Lily Bermel, the report’s author and a visiting fellow at the Columbia Center on Global Energy Policy, argues that at least where energy generation is concerned, the glass is more than “half full.”
On this episode of Shift Key, Lily joins Rob to discuss what we learned from Biden’s big climate law, why it likely never would have achieved its projected emissions declines (at least not without a tremendous transmission buildout), and how studying its legacy changed her mind about policy going forward.
Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap News.
You can find a full transcript of the episode here.
Mentioned:
The “Glass Half Full” report
More from Rob on Lily’s findings
From Heatmap: The Wind and Solar Tax Credits Are About to Expire. Will They Come Back?
Heatmap’s cheat sheet on how the One Big Beautiful Bill Act changed America’s clean energy law
Previously on Shift Key: What Has All This Back-and-Forth Climate Legislating Bought Us?
Jesse Jenkins’ paper on transmission’s role in achieving the IRA’s goals
Brendan Duke’s policy affordability framework
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Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.
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