Former Vice President Al Gore on Wednesday said the Inflation Reduction Act is primarily a climate change bill during the World Economic Forum (WEF) summit.
Speaking on a panel, Gore, who has made fighting climate change one of his main priorities, listed the passage of the inflation bill as one of the best accomplishments by the United States.
“In my country, we passed the ‘Inflation Reduction Act,’ which is primarily a climate act, $369 billion, which will actually be much larger than that, because the heavy lifting is done by tax credits that are very long-term, some of them actually open-ended, and the early investments that have already been triggered by it give a great deal of reason, many reasons, for believing it’s going to be much larger than $369 billion,” Gore said at the Davos, Switzerland forum. “So I’m very encouraged by that.”
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The $739 billion package was passed last year to combat soaring costs that have hamstrung many Americans. Included in the legislation is an estimated $369 billion going toward investments in “Energy Security and Climate Change.”
The bill offers tax credits to households to make cost-saving energy efficiency improvements to their homes and other incentives to manufacturers.
The Environmental Defense Fund called it the “biggest package of climate investments in U.S. history.”
Despite the intent to fight inflation, multiple analyses concluded the package doesn’t. The Congressional Budget Office said the bill will have “a negligible effect” and its impact in 2023 would range between reducing inflation by 0.1% and increasing it by 0.1%.