President Biden’s key climate law has long drawn the ire of former President Donald J. Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio.
Mr. Trump has called for rescinding unspent funds included in the law, which contains tax credits and subsidies to incentivize companies to deploy more clean energy projects. Mr. Vance has also blasted the law as a “Green New Scam” and highlighted Vice President Kamala Harris’s ties to the legislation, noting at an August campaign event that she “cast the deciding vote for the so-called Inflation Reduction Act that sent a lot of our resources to China.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Vance is set to debate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who has praised the Inflation Reduction Act for its “critical investments to reduce costs for families and combat climate change.”
Despite Mr. Vance’s critiques, residents in his state — including the senator’s hometown, Middletown, Ohio — have been big beneficiaries of Mr. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Many local leaders and residents say they don’t want to see the new investments, which are already starting to revitalize the local economy, disappear.
Since the bill’s passage in mid-2022, companies have announced more than $7 billion in clean energy investments in Ohio, according to an analysis from E2, an environmental nonprofit organization. Only six other states have surpassed that amount, according to the analysis.
Among the companies benefiting is the steel manufacturer Cleveland-Cliffs, whose Middletown facility was awarded a grant of up to $500 million from the Energy Department. The grant is intended to help the company upgrade its steel mill so that it can use cleaner fuels like hydrogen or natural gas instead of coke derived from coal. The project is expected to create about 170 permanent jobs and up to 1,200 temporary union construction jobs.
The $500 million grant, which was awarded through a program largely funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, would benefit a steel mill that Mr. Vance’s grandfather once worked at, which was previously owned by Armco. In his book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” Mr. Vance wrote that the city’s steel mill was an “economic savior” that helped lift his grandparents up into the middle class.
Local leaders and residents have praised the grant, saying that it would help the town’s economy, along with improving air quality.
Nathan Cahall, the acting city manager of Middletown, said the federal funding would be “outstanding” for the community, since it would create jobs and support the city’s largest employer. The grant could also help generate more income tax revenue for the city, which would allow local officials to invest more in street and water improvement projects, he said.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity for the city as a whole and our entire community,” Mr. Cahall said.
Rachel McQueen, 43, a restaurant general manager in Middletown, said the grant could benefit the local economy and improve the city’s air quality by reducing the facility’s emissions. Ms. McQueen, who grew up about a mile away from the steel mill, said she remembered her house “always dirty looking on the outside” and her family constantly hosing down soot stuck to their cars.
“If they could do something to make it cleaner and more healthier, by all means, I think that’s a great thing,” she said.
William Martin, a spokesman for Mr. Vance, said the senator “obviously wants to see more investment in cities like Middletown, both in Ohio and all across the country.” But he noted that the grant for Cleveland-Cliffs “made up less than 1 percent” of the total cost of the law, which is projected to exceed $800 billion through 2033.
“The vast majority of the bill was spent on Kamala Harris’s weak, failed and dangerously liberal agenda,” Mr. Martin said in a statement.
The law’s tax credits and grants are intended to support battery, solar and wind projects across the country. It also contains tax breaks that consumers can claim to offset the cost of electric vehicles.
Thomas Pyle, the president of the American Energy Alliance, a conservative research group, said the bill had done little to help Mr. Vance’s constituents and was instead enriching big corporations.
“The I.R.A. was just a massive corporate welfare bill,” Mr. Pyle said. “I don’t think it necessarily benefits his constituents in Ohio when you consider that a lot of the subsidies go to corporations.”
It is unclear how much of the funding Mr. Trump would try to rescind if he is elected. Mr. Trump has criticized major aspects of the law, including the tax credits for electric vehicles, which he said were for “rich people” to purchase “luxury electric cars.”
But environmental and development organizations in Ohio said that the clean energy investments spurred by the climate law had already started to revive manufacturing in the state. They warned that if the money were to be rescinded it would deal a serious blow to Ohio’s economy.
“This is Appalachia’s biggest opportunity since the New Deal,” said Amanda Woodrum, co-director of ReImagine Appalachia, a nonprofit organization focused on development in the Ohio River Valley. “We are finally bringing hope back to the region. People are excited about these investments in coal country.”
The Ohio Environmental Council, a policy organization, estimates that more than $10 billion of clean energy investment has poured into the state during the two years since the legislation was enacted, leading to the creation of more than 13,000 jobs. She said that the development of solar and electric vehicle battery production facilities was helping to re-establish Ohio as a manufacturing powerhouse and that businesses are fearful such investments could be obstructed.
“The business community really wants us to move forward,” said Carol Kauffman, executive director of the Ohio Environmental Council. “They don’t want us to be a buggy whip economy.”
Ms. Kauffman said that she was disappointed that the Trump-Vance campaign has called for repealing important aspects of the Inflation Reduction Act and suggested that Mr. Vance does not realize how many clean energy jobs have been created in his home state.
Harris campaign officials have seized on Mr. Vance’s comments to try and convince voters that a Trump win would damage manufacturing communities like Middletown.
“JD Vance is cheerleading Trump’s plan to destroy jobs in his own hometown,” Joseph Costello, a Harris campaign spokesman, said in a statement.
The likelihood that the climate law will be repealed will depend on not just who wins the presidential election, but also which party controls Congress. Some Republican lawmakers have called for the law to be substantially rolled back, but it could be difficult for Congress to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, given that a significant amount of funds are flowing to red districts.
In August, a group of House Republicans sent a letter to Speaker Mike Johnson warning that “prematurely repealing” the energy tax credits would “undermine private investments and stop development that is already ongoing.”
Still, if Mr. Trump is elected, his administration would most likely have the power to make it harder for businesses to access clean energy tax credits and to impede the flow of federal funds. And energy researchers and business groups expect that Republicans would try to roll back parts of the climate law, in part because they will be looking for ways to offset the cost of extending Mr. Trump’s tax cuts, much of which are set to expire in 2025.
Nick Messenger, a senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute, a nonprofit think tank, said the prospect that the law will face political interference had already had a chilling effect, slowing new projects. He noted that the Trump administration had close ties to the fossil fuel industry and that Mr. Trump would be under pressure in a second term to shift the federal government’s focus away from green projects.
“Folks are trying to read the tea leaves,” Mr. Messenger said. “Overall we’re talking about billions of dollars that have been pledged so far for the state, and I definitely think those would be at risk if the I.R.A. would either formally or informally be repealed.”
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