Steel For Fuel N° 028 of 56 4 Nov 2024
Why clean energy policy is probably more robust than you think
by Andy Lubershane, Partner and Head of Research, Energy Impact Partners
In this note
The question
Is US clean energy policy as easy to unwind as an election result suggests?
The answer
Probably not. No top state for the manufacturing money is reliably Democratic, and Lubershane reads a letter from eighteen Republican members of Congress as evidence that this is already shaping their incentives.
03The argument
The post is one chart and a few notes on it, published in US election week. The chart tracks dollars actually committed to clean energy projects, and this note cannot reproduce it: the state rankings the argument rests on sit in the image. Their shape is the whole case. None of the leading states for clean energy manufacturing money is reliably Democratic and half of the top ten are Republican, forming what he calls a battery belt from the industrial midwest into the southeast. Changing the law would therefore threaten investment in Republican states, which is why he found it unsurprising that eighteen Republican members had already written to the Speaker urging caution and, in the letter’s phrase, “business and market certainty”.
04What you need to know first
- Battery belt
- His name for the corridor of clean energy factories the Inflation Reduction Act is seeding, from the industrial midwest into the southeast.
- Clean Energy Investment Monitor
- A Rhodium Group and MIT tracker of real dollars committed to US clean energy projects, and the chart’s source.
05Details worth keeping
- He singles out Georgia, crediting a decade of state economic development well beyond clean energy.
- He names Southern Company there as Energy Impact Partners’ founding partner, and the firm’s Atlanta office.
- One note opens “Zilch. Nada.”, answering a question the text never states.
06Claims worth citing
All figures as stated on 2024-11-04.
- None of the top states for clean energy manufacturing dollars is reliably Democratic, and half of the top ten are Republican. Lubershane, reading the Clean Energy Investment Monitor
- Eighteen Republican members of Congress wrote to Speaker Mike Johnson in August urging caution over changes to the Inflation Reduction Act. Lubershane
07Where it’s contested
Nobody argues back. The “probably” in the title is doing real work: he never says repeal is off the table, only that the geography of the money makes it harder, and he flags the political reading as a rare injection of punditry. His one stated interest sits in that Georgia credit.