- Environment
- Planet Possible
How the historic climate bill will dramatically reduce U.S. emissions
The Inflation Reduction Act is expected to cut roughly a billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions a year by 2030, save thousands of lives a year, and prompt a transformation of the U.S. energy and transportation landscape.
By the time Thomas Edison built the country’s first coal-fired electric generating station in New York City in 1882, the sooty black combustible rock was already on its way to becoming the nation’s top energy source. Coal lit lanterns and cook stoves, powered ships and trains, fueled iron and steel production. It would go on to reshape the continent, lighting homes and industries from Fairbanks to Florida. By the 1980s, more than half of all U.S. electricity would come from burning the energy-rich—and planet-warming—fossil fuel.
Now the country is finally preparing to move on.
Thanks to the climate section of the new Inflation Reduction Act, which the U.S. House of Representatives passed on August 12, coal burning, already in decline, may generate
