A climate investors’ guide to the Inflation Reduction Act

Democrats’ landmark bill could be huge boost for renewable energy as it goes to Senate this week

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Airmen from the Kentucky National Guard, and Callie – the only search-and-rescue canine in the Dept. of Defense – are deployed among aircraft and troops of the Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia National Guard to help search for and rescue victims of the severe and deadly flash flooding this week caused by heavy rainfall in the region. Photo: U.S. Army via Twitter.

(Bill Sternberg is a veteran Washington journalist and former editorial page editor of USA Today.)

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Callaway Climate Insights) — Whether the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 would reduce inflation is questionable. A new Wharton study says the effect of the legislation — a rebranded, slimmed down version of the bill formerly known as Build Back Better — on prices would be negligible. The act would increase inflation very slightly until 2024 and decrease it after that, with the overall impact being “statistically indistinguishable from zero,” the study concluded.

But if the measure, which contains some $370 billion in climate-related provisions, survives the remaining hurdles in Congress, it would undoubtedly be America’s most ambitious action to combat global warming and would have a massive impact on the clean energy industry. Here’s a look at just some of the potential private-sector winners if the 725-page bill, crafted in secret by Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), makes it across the legislative finish line: