"On the subsidy side, 90 percent of the original Build Back Better plan is, in fact, intact," says climate economist Gernot Wagner, associate professor at New York University and co-author of Climate Shock: The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planet.
Cleaning up
Still, not all the climate initiatives that were discussed by legislators made it into the latest version of the bill. Wagner points out that almost all the measures currently included are rewards, while most penalties--such as a carbon tax--were left on the cutting room floor.
A related measure that didn't make it in: The Clean Energy Performance Program, which would have rewarded energy companies that increased their share of sustainable energy produced and penalized those that didn't. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, home to the country's second-largest coal industry, pressured fellow Democrats to remove the program.
But overall, Wagner thinks the bill's impact on business could be huge.
"It is the biggest climate bill ever agreed upon," says Wagner. "Of course, now the name of the game is to actually pass it."
If political conditions in the United States and elsewhere require a rebranding of technologies formerly known as “climate tech,” so be it. The larger economic, technological, and geopolitical forces propelling everyone toward cleaner energy remain as strong as ever.
