2023-08-05 05:00:12
Ln August 7, 2022, the US Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a plan endowed with 400 billion dollars in spending for energy and the climate, and 100 billion to reduce the cost of healthcare health. This plan, much criticized on the European side for the protectionist measures it contains, also signs the concrete return of the United States to the Paris agreements aimed at limiting global warming, which we can only welcome.
If it is undeniable that, in the federal history of the United States, never the environmental cause benefited from such an amount of public money, following one year and the decrees of application passed, this plan so maligned can it still be perceived as ambitious? The IRA incorporates a set of expenditures in favor of the environmentranging from subsidies for the production of clean energy to tax credits for the acquisition of electric vehicles, through aid for the sequestration of CO emissions2.
With a broad spectrum, it gives pride of place above all to production subsidies and encourages relatively little R&D activities. Moreover, as an annual average and expressed as a share of GDP, the 400 billion dollars as budgeted by the American Congress represent only 0.2% of GDP over the period 2022-2031. This is little.
A plan not scaled to the climate challenge
By way of comparison, climate spending at European Union (EU) level amounts to around 500 billion euros, according to Sébastien Jean, professor at the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts (CNAM). Adding state aid, certainly disparate, we exceed 0.34% per year for the EU.
If, now, we refer to the other evaluations of the IRA and which report higher budgetary expenditure due to the methods of allocating aid, these would represent at best 0.6% of GDP on annual average over ten years. This is certainly becoming more substantial, but hardly more ambitious on the scale of the climate challenge.
Beyond this figure – uncertain and imprecise – of the amounts allocated to green industries, it should be remembered that the United States has committed to an objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 50% at the end of the year. 2030 relative to 2005. In terms of effort, this is equivalent to the EU’s reduction target of 55% compared to 1990.
Tax bite on companies
According to various evaluations, the expenditure in favor of the environment contained in the IRA should allow the USA to approach its objective for 2030. But this objective remains very modest in absolute value: the United States still allows itself to emit 3.7 billion tonnes of CO2 by 2030 compared to 2.2 billion for the EU. Worse, the United States would authorize the emission of 10.6 tons of CO2 per capita by 2030 compared to 4.9 tonnes in the EU… So where is the ambition?
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