President Joe Biden’s landmark climate law is driving outsized clean energy funding into low-income, less-educated and fossil fuel towns, according to a new analysis the Treasury Department released Wednesday.
An estimated 81% of investments in clean projects since the Inflation Reduction Act’s passage last year have been in counties with below-average weekly wages, and 86% are flowing into those with below-average college graduation rates, according to the report seen by NBC News before its release.
In addition, about 70% of clean energy investments since the law’s passage last year have been rolling out in counties where smaller shares of the population are employed, “suggesting weaker labor markets overall,” the report said.
The analysis “shows that funding is going where it’s needed most across the country, not just to the coasts or to wealthy communities,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.
The study also found that so-called energy communities — those with historical ties to fossil fuel industries like coal — have seen some of the fastest growth in these investments.
Funding is going where it’s needed most across the country, not just to the coasts or to wealthy communities.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen
Using data from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Rhodium Group, a research firm, the Treasury researchers looked at clean energy project announcements made before and after Democrats passed the IRA along party lines in August 2022. The law, the largest package of investments ever passed aimed at slowing climate change in the nation, contains a tax credit for clean electricity development along with a stepped up “bonu
