Leah Stokes is an expert on the politics of energy policy. A professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, she helped craft the Biden administration’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and, in the summer of 2022, she helped marshal the grassroots support needed to get the bill through Congress.
While she was promoting the legislation, Stokes had just given birth to twins, one of whom required medical care; Stokes spent countless hours on the phone from the neonatal intensive care unit. For her work on the I.R.A., Timemagazine identified Stokes as one of a hundred “rising stars” from around the world. The citation described her as “a thoughtful leader, researcher, expert communicator, and organizer all rolled into one dynamic — and very fun — person.”
With Donald Trump set to reoccupy the White House and Republicans in charge of both houses of Congress, key provisions of the I.R.A. appear to be endangered. In September, Trump said that, if elected, he would “rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed I.R.A.” His transition team is said to be particularly keen on repealing the bill’s tax credit for purchasing electric vehicles. But there is expected to be pushback from companies and constituencies that are benefitting from the I.R.A., including from GOP lawmakers whose districts would be affected the most.
E360 contributor Elizabeth Kolbert spoke to Stokes about the prospects for the I.R.A., the politics of clean energy, and the possibility of future action on climate change.
Leah Stokes.
Lucy Lu
Elizabeth Kolbert:The Inflation Reduction Act was passed entirely with Democratic votes. But a lot of the money has gone to red districts for new battery plants and EV plants, projects that should bring jobs and should have won political support. It seems that Democrats really didn’t get any credit for that. It also doesn’t seem to have created a new constituency for clean energy, which was, I would think, the political hope.
Leah Stokes:Yeah, the law is based on the theory of industrial policy — which is that if you build stuff in the United States, you create jobs in all corners of the country and that will keep the law in place. We don’t know the answer to that story yet. That’s what we’re going to find out in the next two years.
I believe that corporate lobbying is going to keep a lot of the law in place. I really believe that. The things that will be on the table are largely [clean energy] tax credits, because the grants will be mostly out the door by the time the Biden administration wraps up at the beginning of January. These tax credits are benefiting companies, and you’re already seeing the reporting that for even the most vulnerable tax credits, which I would assume are the EV tax credits, there’s a constituency out there trying to defend those. Companies have made investments that take years to really come to fruition, and they can’t really turn around on a dime.
And when you think about all the manufacturing investments that are in these Republican districts, it’s not just the manufacturing jobs that matter. You start to realize that all those investments in making stuff in America, they want to sell that stuff in America too. And in order to sell that stuff in America, they need the other tax credits for deployment. So that’s where you start to have the tech-neutral tax credit for clean power, the home energy efficiency tax credit, the home solar tax credit, the EV tax credit and so on.
“The work done across the agencies to integrate environmental justice… all that stuff I think is pretty at risk.”
I just think that this is going to be a much stickier policy than many people would suspect. I wrote a history of the production tax credit [aimed at boosting wind energy], which was first passed in 1992 under George H. W. Bush, and the investment tax credit [aimed at boosting solar energy], which was first passed in 2005 under George W. Bush. And those policies, man, people kept trying to kill them. They kept trying to not extend them, and they just stick around. Maybe they lapse for three months here, six months there, and then they come back. That’s decades ago now, and the solar and wind industries are not start-ups anymore. They are massive employers in the United States.
Kolbert:What are the things in the I.R.A. that haven’t turned out to work particularly well?
Stokes:I feel that there was a real perfectionism in the Biden administration to make sure that every dollar was spent in the absolute perfect way. That looked pretty silly the day after the November election when all this money was stuck in government coffers because they were really trying to make sure it was all spent perfectly.
Kolbert:But most of the actual grant money will already be out the door by the time we get to January?
Stokes:Certainly most. It won’t be all. There will be some pretty painful losses. I’m particularly concerned about Community Change Grants [aimed at helping disadvantaged communities cut pollution and prepare for climate change]. You can get up to $20 million for things like a community solar project. It’s just a really hard thing to get all that money out the door.
Kolbert:It seems like environmental justice is really on the chopping block.
Stokes: All the work that was done across the agencies to integrate environmental justice into, for example, how grants are dispersed to make sure the money and benefits are flowing to disadvantaged communities — all that stuff I think is pretty at risk.
Kolbert:And now we’re going to presumably withdraw again from the Paris Agreement.
Stokes:Yeah, I think it will be demoralizing for people, but the fact is that the United States will still be making progress. We saw this in 2016 when a lot of these cities and states and counties said, “Hey, we’re still in.” So I think there’s actually still going to be a lot of progress. The interesting thing about the clean energy transition is that it has a lot to do with companies investing in and making money from the transition. I think that that is going to be the engine that keeps progress moving forward in the absence of federal leadership.
“We might see a crony capitalism where the interest of a specific company, as opposed to the whole industry, prevails.”
Kolbert:But you’ve written about how on the state level, companies that don’t want to make progress are really good at undermining state legislation. I’m wondering why you think that’s not going to happen again.
Stokes: Well, the theory that I put forward in my book [Short Circuiting Policy] is that the opponents were stronger than the advocates. I am betting that the advocates are starting to be stronger than the opponents, and that’s going to change the dynamics. The reason why I think that is even just Elon Musk — a person who made his fortune off electric vehicles and solar and batteries — having such a prominent role, whether you love it or hate it, in this administration.
Last time we had [Exxon CEO] Rex Tillerson become the secretary of state. That’s the difference. [This time] you have someone like Elon. He has a different interest.
Now, what we might see is almost like a crony capitalism where the interest of a specific company, as opposed to the whole industry, might prevail, when it comes to, for example, the EV tax credit. Maybe they repeal it because it’s not really in Tesla’s interest, which gives a bit of a competitive advantage to them that the other companies aren’t getting, because Tesla is so much further along. How exactly that plays out is to be determined.
Kolbert: A lot of people have said, “Look, there’s a lot of energy and momentum behind this transition, and Trump can slow it, but he can’t stop it.” But speed is the issue here. How much damage can Trump do?
Stokes: Well, we’re going to find out. I think he’s going to have two years. I think there’s going to be a big swing in the other direction [in the 2026 midterm elections]. Then they start to have less of an opportunity to do legislative work.
I agree with you on speed, of course. In order to really take on this transition, we can’t actually have this much whiplash in the policy space. If there is some depolarization that starts to play out in this moment, that might be worth a lot in terms of the transition. You think about somebody like [Republican] Senator [John] Curtis [of Utah]. Senator Curtis has a fully electrified home. Now he’s in the Senate and he’s saying things like, “Look, we’re not going to throw the whole [I.R.A] out. We’re going to tweak it.”
Maybe we’re going back towards a period where we at least have some constructive engagement from Republicans because of the jobs in their district, because of prominent people like Elon Musk having senior leadership positions.
“There’s a lot of reasons to feel scared and upset, but when it comes to the climate, I’m less depressed than other people.”
When we talk of depolarizing climate change, I think in our minds we have some folk theory that we’ll all get along and believe in science and go off into the future together. It’s probably not going to be like that. It’s probably going to be more like Elon Musk becoming a shadow president and caring about solar and batteries and pissing off a lot of left-wing people like me who maybe don’t agree with all of his politics on everything, but the fact is that he has massive investments in clean energy and electrification.
That might not be what we want the transition to look like, if we’re really lefty progressives, but it might be what the transition is going to look like. And that world is better than complete retrenchment and repeal when it comes to climate policy.
I’m not saying it’s better when it comes to immigration policy or women’s rights or 1,000 other things — our democracy. There’s a lot of reasons why people have a right to feel really scared and upset, but when it comes to the climate, I’m less depressed than other people.
Kolbert: Do you see a depolarized future here?
Stokes: The Republican Party has long been married to all kinds of corporate interests. It’s just been married to the particular interest of the fossil fuel industry for a couple of decades. Wouldn’t it be great if there was somebody to rival the fossil fuel industry, in terms of their relationship with the Republican Party?
A Hyundai EV plant being built in Ellabell, Georgia in August 2023. The plant is supported by tax credits from the I.R.A.
Stephen B. Morton / Bloomberg via Getty Images
Kolbert: You have pointed out the Inflation Reduction Act isn’t going to get us all the way to our Paris Agreement goals anyway. We’re going to need something else of a similar magnitude. And that is not happening in the next four years. Do you see that over some distant horizon or when you peer into the future?
Stokes: Yeah, I think in some ways, 2029 is a better opportunity to pass climate policy than 2025 was ever going to be. The Democratic Party had this idea that they had already [dealt with climate change], which was not true, unfortunately.
There were so many other topics to talk about [in this election]. I think in 2029 there will be more of an appetite to do climate policy. The challenge is we have so little time left on the clock that we really have to be pushing [climate] laws again and again, but that isn’t really how the legislative system works or how the activist community works. It’s really hard to do everything we all just did to get [the I.R.A.] passed, and then we need to do it again? That’s pretty hard.
Kolbert: I hear your twins in the background. What is the message you want them to hear? They’re the generation that could be around in 2100.
Stokes: A lot of people [who worked on the I.R.A.] made this calculus: Hey, this is the most important thing I can do to protect my kids. I feel like more and more, if you look at the young Republicans, they believe in climate change. They know this stuff is coming. Maybe that’s what depolarization ends up looking like. Which would be good, because the status quo is not exactly great.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
