Everyone Is Asking What The Future of U.S. Climate Policy Will Be

I was still idling in my Thanksgiving vacation vibes as I boarded my flight back to Washington D.C. on Monday and was jolted back into the climate conversation seated just behind a clean tech founder. And that’s how it’s been this week: bumping into energy and climate people from across the country at nearly every turn.     

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With the 2024 election and U.N. climate conference firmly in the rearview mirror, climate policy discussions have hit a feverpitch in the U.S. capital as companies, advocates, and officials try to figure out the new rules of the road. And there are no easy answers. 

First and foremost is the future of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), President Joe Biden’s landmark climate spending bill. I’ve written about the future of the law several times before, so I won’t repeat too much here, but in short I’ve argued that political dynamics have made it unlikely that the law would be repealed in full even if parts of it are scaled back. 

In Washington, conversations about what parts might be targeted—the preferred wording is “with a scalpel”—have now gotten specific. And everyone is looking to read the tea leaves. On multiple occasions this week, I have found myself in conversations analyzing the precise wording in an August letter from 18 Republican members of Congress who pushed back at attempts to repeal the law. The conventional wisdom is that tax credits for electric vehicles are vulnerable while incentives to help Republican favored technologies like carbon capture and storage are likely safe. 

But the truth is that no one really knows what dynamic will play out between President-elect Donald Trump and a Congress with slim Republican control. On Capitol Hill this week, lobbyists and corporate executives pounded the pavement to make their case about what they hope will remain. 

The future of government programs like the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, which lends money to companies advancing clean technologies, is also a key question. The office, known as LPO, hosted a long-planned gathering of clean technology companies in Washington this week called Deploy24 as a vigorous debate has ensued among Republicans about whether to target the program. Republicans often say the LPO represents a misuse of federal tax dollars—even as those loans generate a return for the federal government while aiding the U.S. private sector.

On Thursday, Jigar Shah, who runs LPO, said that companies expect the office to continue giving out loans. “We’re operating the loan programs office as an institution,” he said at a breakfast with reporters on the sidelines of Deploy24. 

And then there are the policies that may not seem directly related to climate, but nonetheless have the potential to shape the U.S. decarbonization story. Perhaps no such policy area is more important than trade. If Trump implements the full set of tariffs and trade barriers as promised, it would rattle the global economy—including disrupting the supply chains necessary for clean technologies and decarbonization both in the U.S. and around the world. 

Even amid all this uncertainty, a sense of optimism remains. For years, companies have said they support climate policy but rank it low as a lobbying priority. While corporate policy positions are crafted around the bottomline, it is nonetheless remarkable to see companies now lobbying on behalf of what is fundamentally climate policy. The question is to what extent—and to whom—policymakers listen