If Joe Biden’s presidency had a capstone achievement, it was the Inflation Reduction Act, and if the IRA’s project of reindustrializing America through climate action has a poster child, it is Georgia. The Peach State is home to more new jobs expected to result from clean energy projects that have been announced since the law’s passage in August 2022 than any other state.
Those jobs — some 42,000, according to a report, shared with Grist first, by Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock — are now at risk as congressional Republicans consider repealing some or all of the IRA’s tax credits to pay for President Donald Trump’s proposed tax cuts. The report argues that the possibility of IRA incentives being discontinued has already had an impact. In February, two battery manufacturers, Freyr Battery and Aspen Aerogels, canceled plans for new factories in Georgia. Those projects would have together brought 1,400 jobs to the state and invested nearly $3 billion.
The Republicans weighing whether to kill the IRA must contend with the politically inconvenient fact that it dispropo... Read more
