The EPA will dole out $4.3 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act to cut pollution and combat climate change over the next six years. Hundreds of local municipalities, states and tribes applied to get a share of the money; 25 made the cut.
The projects run the gamut: forest management in Montana, livestock waste reduction in Nebraska and electric vehicle chargers in Southern California. What they all have in common, said the EPA’s Jennifer Macedonia, is that they are “impactful, investment-ready measures to reduce greenhouse gas pollution.”
She said the projects the agency selected will eliminate 148 million metric tons of planet-warming gas emissions by 2030 and nearly a billion by 2050.
“That is equivalent to the emissions from energy use in 5 million homes every year for 25 years,” Macedonia said.
A few of the grants are for less than $10 million, which isn’t huge from a national perspective. But for some recipients, the awards will be massive.
“It’s 10 times larger than any other grant we’ve ever gotten in Cuyahoga County,” said Mike Foley, administrator of Cuyahoga Green Energy, which is a young utility serving the greater Cleveland area. He says its $130 million award will go toward cleaning up the power on the local electric grid.
“Our application in the EPA was to take six landfills or brownfield sites and just put a whole lot of solar on them,” Foley said. All of that extra energy that solar generates will allow a local municipality to decommission a nearby coal-fired plant that dates back to 1888.
The largest chunk of the federal money — nearly $1.2 billion — is going toward transportation. That sector generates the largest portion of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.
Austin, Texas got $48 million. That money will go toward building the region’s “first light rail system and other transportation improvements, bus rapid transit,” said the city’s transportation officer Michelle Marx.
The city is also expanding the Interstate 35 freeway, which is the main artery through town. That could be a nightmare for rush hour drivers for a while.
So the city will set out to do the environmental version of making lemons into lemonade: “When people’s behavior is going to have to change anyway. We see this as kind of a leverage moment for us,” said Marx.
Some of the grant will go toward education and encouraging people to give the new public transit system a shot.
The EPA is measuring the impact by 2050 in part because the administration’s goal is to be net zero emissions by then.
