Note: This transcript is auto generated and lightly edited.
BEN BEACHY: We know that to tackle the climate crisis, we're going to have to mobilize trillions of dollars to climate investments. Properly guided, that wave of investments can flow into good union jobs. Properly guided, it can flow into communities that have endured decades of divestment. Properly guided, our climate strategy is a job strategy, is an equity strategy. And you know, at this point, that's not just theory, that's practice.
MONICA DE BOLLE: Welcome to Policy for the Planet, a podcast exploring the global response to the climate crisis. We'll unravel the complex tradeoffs of different policy choices to steer us toward sustainable solutions and public well-being.
I'm Monica de Bolle, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Welcome to the conversation.
The Biden administration wanted to promote climate efforts, workers' rights, and social justice all at the same time in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. What did the Administration consider during its implementation?? And as many parts of the IRA are being rolled back, what lessons does this experience hold for the future?
Joining to explore the answers is Ben Beachy, Senior Fellow at the Global Fund for a New Economy.
Ben served under President Biden as Special Assistant to the President for climate, industry, and community investment. He worked to advance the Administration's industrial strategy by fostering cuts in fossil fuel emissions, well-paying union jobs, and investments in hard-hit communities.
Previously, Ben spent two decades advocating and promoting industrial policies at climate, labor, and other public interest groups. He served as Vice President for industrial policy at the BlueGreen Alliance – a national coalition of unions and environmental organizations – and before that founded and directed Sierra Club's industrial policy program. Now at the Global Fund for a New Economy, Ben is working to help cultivate a working-class climate agenda.
Ben chatted with us before Trump's budget bill was signed into law, which cut many clean energy incentives from the IRA among other rollbacks.
So Ben, welcome. It's a pleasure for us to have you on the show. Thank you so much for joining us today. You have this extremely interesting career where you've been in and out of government. have dedicated your career to pursuing climate goals. You've looked at one of your issues is of course job creation and social justice. Can you talk a little bit about your career and how...all of these interests came together.
BEN BEACHY: Yeah, it's a great question. Thank you so much for having me on. It's wonderful to be here. So my career over the last number of years has tracked really the formation of what eventually became the Inflation Reduction Act. So let me start with a little bit of background. From the very beginning, the vision that led to the Inflation Reduction Act was, can we build a bold investment package?
That simultaneously cuts climate pollution, creates good union jobs, and invests in hard-paid communities so as to help build a more just economy. that vision was that climate jobs justice vision was really years in the making. Starting back in 2018, a number of us, a number of civil society organizations joined with members of Congress in crafting the vision, the narrative, the specific policy framework that would eventually become the Inflation Reduction Act.
At the time, I was working at Sierra Club and then later on, the Blue-Green Alliance, so working with lot of unions and climate groups. And this was really a truly cross-movement inside-outside effort. You had unions partnering with climate groups, partnering with racial, environmental, and economic justice organizations, and a pretty broad spectrum of members of Congress.
And of course, once President Biden took office, the Biden administration to craft the legislation. Once it passed into law, about a year later, I went into the White House to help implement the IRA, working with an array of colleagues to try to ensure that the investments did indeed uphold all three planks of that vision, the climate, jobs, and justice. So I think it bears asking, you know, why did we think that a single piece of legislation could actually unite climate jobs and justice goals, right?
And my answer to that is like, let's start with climate. We know that the climate change requires us to transform virtually every sector of our economy. And the IRA indeed channels billions of dollars into most corners of our economy for that transformation, efficient buildings, expansion of clean energy, low emissions manufacturing, etc. If you're going to be channeling billions of dollars into the economy, you're going to be creating jobs. And because we care about job quality, not just job quantity, we wanted to ensure these were good jobs. And so we have all these incentives in the IRA that were incentives to work with unions on project labor agreements, to use registered apprenticeship programs, to pay good wages, and the basic ingredients of a good job.
And because we saw this as an opportunity to really build a more just economy, we wanted to make sure that a lot of that job creation, a lot of the economic growth was happening in communities that have been hard hit by the status quo. Coal communities that powered our nation for generations. Communities of color fighting for environmental justice and clean air. Communities hollowed out by deindustrialization. Decades of trickle-down economics, these communities were really at the back of the line for getting public investments.
We have some critics who have said, we're trying to do too much here. We were guilty of quote unquote an everything bagel strategy, right? I don't know if you've ever had an everything bagel. Here's the thing about them. They taste good. And they taste good for a reason. They taste good because they combine ingredients that actually pair well together. Garlic, onions, sesame seeds, not unlike climate, jobs, and justice.
Yeah, I mean, I'm seriously like, we know that to tackle the climate crisis, we're going to have to mobilize trillions of dollars to climate investments. Properly guided, that wave of investments can flow into good union jobs. Properly guided, it can flow into communities that have endured decades of divestment. Properly guided, our climate strategy is a job strategy, is an equity strategy. And you know, at this point, that's not just theory, that's practice.
It's still early, but we have some data suggesting post-IRA progress on each of these three fronts. On climate, we have a nearly 100 gigawatt boom in clean energy in this country, the largest ever. We, last year, reached the highest ever level of union density in the clean energy sector, creating potential for good jobs. We have three quarters of the post-IRA clean investments going into communities that are low income. So, again, we have the makings of a win-win-win here.
And that is not a happenstance. That is a deliberate outcome of an everything bagel strategy.
MONICA DE BOLLE: I love the way you put it as an everything bagel strategy because that's somewhat the flavor of this podcast as well. It's kind of an everything bagel where we try to bring together, you know, economics and public health and climate issues. Of course, climate issues are at the center of what we're doing. And it's exactly that. I mean, you start seeing the interconnection between things and they become very obvious just as they are, you know, with climate, jobs and justice. These three things are obviously interrelated.
But opposition though, when we look at opposition to climate action, we see that it is very much based on the view that, any climate action is going to hurt workers. So we should stay away from that. Why is that view wrong? And what would you say to that kind of opposition?
BEN BEACHY: I think the answer to that, need to say a word about an industrial policy, because that is the approach that's at the center of the Inflation Reduction Act, right? And industrial policy really creates the opportunity to tackle the climate crisis in a way that supports workers and affordability and a more equitable economy. To get into that, I think it's important to define our terms, because industrial policy, sometimes we talk about in these gauzy esoteric terms.
So, but at its core, industrial policy has a pretty simple threefold premise that to build a more thriving, equitable economy, we need to care about what we make, how we make it, and where we make it. And those three might sound elementary, but frankly, that goes right against the market fundamentalist worldview that has dominated for the prior decades. Take an example. Look at what we make.
If you simply let the market decide what we make, well, that's how we ended up with a solid slice of our economy devoted to producing financial derivatives, but not solar panels or semiconductors, right? Industrial policy simply suggests that maybe the government should put its thumb on the scale in favor of the solar panels. Maybe we should grow those industries that have outsized potential to grow the middle class, to combat inequality, to give us a shot at a livable climate.
And of course, as you're growing those industries, again, that's going to create a lot of jobs, but because we care how we make things, those have to be good jobs. And I already mentioned the labor standards that we put into the IRA. That again may seem like common sense, but goes right up against the market fundamentalist logic that we should just prioritize the lowest cost of doing business above all else, which is of course how we got a global race to the bottom in labor standards.
And the last plank of this, when I say we care about where we make things, it is because we actually really want to invest in those communities that have endured decades of divestment. And here, the market firmless view and paradigm has been partly responsible for those decades of divestment. Because if you simply let the market decide where investment should flow, well, they're going to flow to the most profitable neighborhoods, right, while leaving behind many communities, including the one I was born into, that the market has deemed unprofitable.
And so you have real opportunities with industrial policy to advance the ball. I can give an example from the IRA, because I think it's helpful to be concrete here. battery manufacturing, right? Before the IRA, we had a relatively small battery manufacturing sector in this country.
And with the IRA, it was decided, you know, this is a strategically important sector. It's strategically important because we want to ensure a secure supply of power for our homes and vehicles, and we want to ensure that our workers can reap the rewards of a rapidly growing global industry. And so the IRA channels a lot of investments into battery manufacturing. And the results, I think, you know, speak for themselves. We have seen a five-fold increase in investments in battery manufacturing after the IRA. And of course those are creating a lot of jobs. By some estimates it's around 150,000 battery manufacturing jobs could result from this. And again, because we care about how we make things, the IRA incentives create potential for those to be good jobs.
And because we care about where we make things, and we put that into the IRA, it turns out that according to a study last year, three quarters of battery and charger investments are actually flowing into low income communities.
As one example, so I was born in the heart of West Virginia in the middle of coal country. Just down the road from where I was born, there is a new battery manufacturing facility that is being built right now and with IRA support. It's at Sparks, the company. And this company is partnering with the United Mine Workers to provide training pathways for former miners to make batteries, having good union jobs doing so, in the heart of West Virginia, in the heart of coal country.
MONICA DE BOLLE: So let me ask you this. How do we get workers, I mean, with all of this in mind, how do we actually get workers to buy into these policies, to accept that these policies may actually be something that will change their lives and will have a good impact on them? How do we change the narrative?
BEN BEACHY: Absolutely. Yeah, it's a great question. It's a critical one we face right now, actually. So I mentioned that one of the premises of the IRA was that we can deliver on climate and jobs and justice goals at the same time. And I suggested, think the data shows that we, that's bearing out. But there's another premise that has gone very much unfulfilled.
And that is by linking climate investments with economic benefits, we would spur broad-based popular demand for ongoing waves of climate investments, right? That there would be a virtuous cycle where climate investments yield economic benefits, yields popular support and votes for yet another round of climate investments. I think it's safe to say that has not materialized. We do not have workers from suburban Atlanta to Southeast Michigan clamoring for another wave of climate investments, right?
So I think we have to be real about that and ask ourselves why. And there are number of reasons out there. One of them that I think is critical to focus on is the fact that the practice of policycraft when it comes to climate policy has largely excluded most working people. It's been a very inside baseball game. And so I do not think that the path forward for the climate movement is for DC professionals like myself to bust out of our offices in like three years and say, hey, guess what I'm working in America. We've crafted IRA 2.0 and trust us. It's going to be great for you and your family and your community. That would fall flat, right? All right. And it would deserve to do so. Yeah. I mean, because like the workers and communities who stand to benefit most from a next wave of climate investments really need to be at the forefront of designing those investments.
I think that is critical A. to get the policies right, and B. to build the power to get the policies passed. We have this bifurcation. It's not unique to climate, but climate policy is not immune to it. Where building power and building policy are treated as two separate crafts. And those of us who are involved in the policymaking infrastructure, policy wonks, are called upon to write the policy.
And the vast majority, pretty much everyone else, is called upon to provide reliable votes every couple of years or maybe some calls to Congress. And that means that the vast majority of the country is public policy's passive recipient, not its agent. And I think that has to change. I think it's wrong on several fronts. One, it's not particularly democratic to ignore the lived experience of millions of people. know, core tenet of democracy is that those who are experiencing impacts of a given policy should have a say in its design. And I think the current chasm between policy design and policy impact really undercuts that tenet. Two is that the inside baseball game really yields subpar policies, right? You know, those of us who go to policy schools and who are in the DC policymaking apparatus, we bring a lot. We got technical expertise. That's helpful. But we also lack on the ground expertise.
We need to know how policy is actually going to play out in the community or in a workplace. And millions of people have that. You could even ask a few organizers. They would have a lot of that information that we need to make good policy. And lastly, if it is just a DC game, an inside baseball game, it's going to yield really anemic pushes to pass policy into law.
If those of us in the DC bubble unilaterally try to design the next big wave of climate investments, we would be in a decidedly inconvenient position of having to explain to the rest of the country why they should support a policy that they themselves did not call for. We have to bridge the building of policy and the building of power.
I think we actually have some real opportunities to do so. There are a few states that, even in the shadow of the Trump administration, will be passing progressive policies, including some climate policies, in the next couple of years.
MONICA DE BOLLE: As we move into the post-IRA era, what are the lessons you think that we've learned from mistakes made, achievements, challenges, specifically in the communication, but not just in the communication area? And how do you think we can keep momentum?
BEN BEACHY: Great questions. so yeah, in terms of like things we could do better, there's of course any policy push I think has a lot of lessons learned for things you could do better. Since you mentioned communications, let me name a couple of messaging gaps that I think we had. It has been said before, but it bears repeating that, you know, in pushing the IRA, our main economic message was jobs, jobs, jobs.
And we were doing this in a low unemployment, high inflation environment. And I think that message did not always resonate with a lot of families, a lot of communities whose number one economic concern was anxiety over the high cost of living. That was a messaging gap, but it actually, it stemmed from a policy gap. In the initial proposal, like the build back proposal, we actually had more climate investments that would have more directly targeted the cost of living, including like housing investments, for example, right? And those were stripped away in the sausage making that led to the IRA. And so we were left with a policy gap on affordability, which led to a messaging gap.
Going forward, I think the climate community, policymakers, advocates, organizers, have an important task in front of them, which is how do we craft an affordability forward climate agenda? I think there are real solutions that have been experimented with on the ground. We need to build on those solutions. Another messaging gap I would name that has been less discussed is, you know, we had a lot of investments going out into many communities across the country.
Could we have equipped the local leaders in those communities to really be the spokespeople for those investments. Like the local mayor, the city council member, the union local president, a Main Street business owner. These are folks that have been calling for investments in their communities for years now. And I think the trust and authenticity that such local messengers have in their own communities is really hard to match on the national level. So I think in the next go, really equipping local messengers to be the agents, the spokespeople for this investment wave is going to be critical.
In terms of forward momentum, even despite the efforts of the Republicans in Congress, to roll back a lot of the IRA investments, even despite the law passage that is going to curtail some of those, a number of those investments, we still have real opportunities on the ground because the economics of clean energy has not shifted and we still have clean energy projects opening up across the country, clean manufacturing projects as well.
And those projects offer an opportunity for communities, including in red and purple and blue states, to really shape the direction of the clean economy in their own neighborhoods. And the tool here that is helpful for this is community benefits agreements.
These are agreements that local labor and community groups can negotiate with companies to ensure that clean energy projects deliver locally defined economic, health, and environmental benefits. We included incentives in the IRA for community benefits agreements, but it's not a new tool. We've had this play out in different places. So as an example, in Alabama, you had groups like Greater Birmingham Ministries and jobs to move America and a variety of local groups come together negotiate with an electric bus manufacturer that wanted to build an electric bus factory in middle of Alabama and that led to a community benefits agreement that in which the company committed to equitable hiring practices so ensuring there are on ramps to good jobs for underrepresented workers in that facility and good training opportunities for them.
Thereafter, on the heels of that agreement, the Communications Workers of America managed to negotiate, managed to organize a union in that same facility, resulting in wage increases. And so today, you have an opportunity for underrepresented workers to get training for good union jobs, making electric buses in the heart of Alabama, a right to work state, right? And that happened before the IRA.
MONICA DE BOLLE: That's a great story.
BEN BEACHY: And so, regardless of all the efforts to roll back all the IRA investments, that can still happen. We still have community benefits available to us. And if more groups are resourced to pursue these kinds of agreements, more communities, more workers will be able to call the shots over what the clean economy looks like in their own neighborhoods.
MONICA DE BOLLE: One thing that does pop up in my mind though, is this whole discussion around abundance, know, the buzzword that a lot of Democrats on the defensive, so to speak, now use to talk about the idea that liberals and advocates of climate goals need to be more realistic when it comes to thinking about government taxes or other policies or even regulation that in their view hinder or may hinder action. How do you respond to that? And how do you view that? And can pursuing climate goals be reconciled with this abundance view?
BEN BEACHY: Yeah, I think there's probably been more ink spilled on the word abundance in the last few months than at any point since the word was created in the Middle Ages. But beneath all that hubbub, there is actually a very critical question, which is how do we build things faster, right?
And I don't think any climate advocate worth their salt is not going to deny the importance of that question. Mission critical to tackling the climate crisis is building quickly clean energy, clean manufacturing, and efficient buildings, etc, and a critical question really demands an actionable answer. But to date, a lot of the debate has really remained at a high level of narrative, right? Not so much like specific policy prescriptions that could actually form an agenda. And I think we need to move to an agenda.
And so, what would happen if we actually asked what on the ground are actually the biggest sources of clean energy delays. And what are the remedies for those delays? What would a data-backed agenda for clean energy abundance look like? And I've done this, others have done this. We know what the clean energy delays are, they're not new.
If you look at them, in most cases, the biggest causes of clean energy delay is in absence of policy, not an excess of policy. That is, often the solution to expedite clean energy projects is more policy, not less. And that actually runs really quite counter to at least the narratives of some abundance proponents who say, look, the problem here is democratic over regulation. There's all these progressive wish lists. This goes back to the everything they will critique, of course.
You have some explicitly saying, you know, we, have this whole climate jobs justice goal really to pursue the climate part. got to dispense with the jobs and the justice part, know, get away, take away all this labor and equity incentives and standards, et cetera. And that just doesn't reflect the data. I mean, we have surveys of clean energy developers who will just tell you what the biggest challenges they're facing in the biggest sources of delay. And they don't say, it's all these pesky labor incentives or these equity incentives.
That's not something that they say. They have a lot of other delays. And I can tell you that a lot of the IRA grant programs that had these labor and equity incentives attached them, those incentives did not deter clean energy companies from applying for these grant programs in droves. Many of these programs that had labor and equity incentives were oversubscribed 10 to 1. So these elements of the everything big old labor equity, these are not the problem. So what is the problem?
And I think we have to actually zoom in on the answer to that. And I have looked at this, many analysts have looked at this. And if you look at five of the biggest sources of clean energy delay, in four out of five, the problem is again, an absence of policymaking, where we actually need more policy, not less.
MONICA DE BOLLE: So when you say that, I do want to ask you about that because just to have sort of an example, what does that mean in an example?
BEN BEACHY: Sure. All right. So one example is that one of the bigger sources of delay is community opposition, right? Like if a community comes out against your project, it makes it harder to actually bring it to completion on time. And we actually have a tool to try to get around that, right? It's called community benefits agreements, which I just spoke to.
And I mentioned how community benefits agreements offer real opportunities for workers and for communities to translate clean energy growth into locally defined economic and health benefits. They also provide an opportunity for clean energy developers to avoid community opposition and instead lock in explicit support from community groups for their project, which is why I've actually heard a number of clean energy companies asking for templates for community benefits agreements. This is why we tried to incentivize the usage of community benefits agreements in the IRA. And so it is absolutely true that they are pro-worker and pro-community. They are also pro-deployment of clean energy. Again, these are ingredients that go well together. This is the everything bagel.
MONICA DE BOLLE: Thank you very much, Ben. I thought this was an extremely interesting, very rich conversation. Thank you for joining us on Policy for the Planet.
BEN BEACHY: I'm really glad to be here.
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