Forecasters say the president’s clean-energy incentives will be more effective than they had originally expected, in part because of new federal regulations.
The estimated price tag for President Biden’s clean-energy and climate agenda has effectively doubled since the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law a year and a half ago.
Nearly all of the increase is attributable to forecasters’ belief that the law will be more popular than they had originally expected, in part because of the way the Biden administration wrote certain regulations. That rising price tag may actually be good for reducing greenhouse gas emissions — and for the U.S. economy.
The Inflation Reduction Act, which Democrats passed on a party-line vote in summer 2022, includes tax credits and other subsidies for low-emission energy technologies that are meant to help wean the nation from fossil fuels.
Many of those credits are effectively unlimited, meaning the more people or companies choose to claim them, the more they will add to federal deficits. The uncapped credits include incentives for manufacturers to build solar-panel or wind-turbine factories, and for consumers to buy electric vehicles. Budget scorekeepers have to estimate how popular those credits will be, in order to forecast how much they’ll cost.
I can’t wait for the IRA to actually go into swing as far as the incentives for efficiency upgrades and electrification for residential properties are concerned.
I own a super old house and I’m not at all well off (bought in 2013, because I needed somewhere I couldn’t get evicted from, and my disability covers most of the mortgage, but I don’t have stable employment) so taking care of weatherproofing is way outside of my budget.
My house is drafty af, being 140 years old and not super well maintained, and we get cold winters - yearly average temp here is 40f. If I keep the heat at 60, which is a temp at which my hands and feet go numb if I’m in it all day, my heat-only bill is like 150/mth (which is still high) at 62 it’s $200+\mth. 65 it jumps to 300+, and heaven forbid I go with 68, cuz that’s well beyond 400/mth.
Sure that saving for myself would be great, but my house is heated with gas, so it would also reduce emissions, and that’s sort of the point. It would also free up a bit of funding for economic stimulation (what with spending a small fortune on heat every year). Win-win.
Drafts are a huge killer. Anywhere you can see daylight through a crack should be sealed up. That alone makes a big difference in comfort and gas bills. The good news is door strips and insulating sealant foam are inexpensive.
After those easier things are taken care of though, prices for things like a new set of double pained windows or upgrading the insulation are quite high. But, at least hit up the easy ones in the first paragraph yourself. Killing the drafts makes a world of difference.
I replaced all the windows the first year I lived here (they were shitty wood single pane double hung, and I used to work for a door and window company so it was an easy call), but left the storm windows for the extra airspace. The doors/windows aren’t drafty, the structure of the house itself is, especially where different materials tie together. I can’t see light through any of it but I can feel the air movement. Arguably worse. It’s just settled over time, and come apart at the seams. (I can relate)
I need to remove all the siding and exterior insulation, reseal, seal the foundation, reinsulate, and reside it to take care of the problem. Which is going to be very expensive, and why I haven’t already done it. I’m looking at roughly 1/5-1/4 the total I paid for the place to do this.
This isn’t a small draft issue, unfortunately, it’s a huge one. I’ve already done all the small stuff cuz it’s so expensive to not.