What the Democratic party platform says about what’s next for the IRA

Four years ago, the Democratic party’s climate policy platform focused on undoing the setbacks of the Trump administration, and on the investment proposals that ultimately became the Inflation Reduction Act. That platform embraced both environmental and social justice, which were key themes of the broader Biden-Harris campaign.

Today, as Democrats flood into the Windy City to officially nominate Vice President Kamala Harris, the party is doubling down on Biden-era policies in what amounts to a phase two of the IRA era. 

Primarily, of course, the platform that was released today affirms the support of a potential Harris administration for the law’s investments in clean energy, and its intent to block Congressional attempts to repeal or trim back those legislative wins. The bulk of the eight-page section titled “Tackling the Climate Crisis, Lowering Energy Costs, & Securing Energy Independence” focuses on concrete gains made during the Biden administration: 300,000 new clean energy jobs, $400 billion in private investment, and 585 new clean energy manufacturing projects in 47 states.

But beyond that, the party outlined a few key pipelines that could ensure that a potential Harris administration can build upon those wins: for research and development of new and improved technologies, for workers to fill new energy jobs, and for project deployment. On the research front, the party said it will create a new agency, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Climate (ARPA-C) to focus on energy storage, emissions reduction, and climate resilience. The new agency will be modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which develops emerging technologies for military use. 

And the party also pledged to establish a new national lab for climate research, to be affiliated with a historically Black college or university (or HBCU), or another minority-serving institution. (That promise comes at a time when the imperative of national labs seems to be shifting toward getting proven climate technologies to market as quickly as possible.)

Meanwhile, the climate and clean energy workforce has been a focus of the party platform since 2020, when Democrats promised to “create millions of family-supporting and union jobs in clean energy generation, energy efficiency, clean transportation, advanced manufacturing, and sustainable agriculture.” (Four years ago, in the third quarter of 2020, the unemployment rate was a whopping 8.8%.)

Post-IRA, as hundreds of projects break ground in nearly every state in the country, the focus is still on jobs, but with a different bent. With unemployment largely under control, the 2024 party platform focuses on ensuring there are enough workers now and in the coming decades to fill those climate and clean energy jobs.

Work to do that is already underway, the platform said, via the 2023 launch of the American Climate Corps, a workforce training initiative currently focused on training up 20,000 young workers for clean energy and climate projects. The party’s goal is to triple that number by the end of the decade, it added, and to continue to invest in registered apprenticeships in clean energy as well as workforce training programs for women and minorities.

Last on the list of pipelines needed to ensure the IRA’s benefits endure, the party said it will focus on incentivizing investments in new transmission lines and line upgrades, including by continuing to support the requisite manufacturing growth and by improving and speeding up environmental review and permitting processes. Those are efforts that have already seen movement this year in both Congress, with the Senate permitting reform bill currently making its way through the legislature, and in the White House, with the creation of a new agency to help streamline the country’s transmission backlog.

Ultimately, the Harris campaign and wider Democratic party are intent upon holding onto the gains of the Biden administration — and maintaining the benefits of clean energy for both the labor market and electricity costs.“Republicans will not be allowed to pull the rug out from American clean energy businesses, send hundreds of thousands of jobs overseas, and strip all Americans of cheaper, cleaner energy choices, all to please their special interest backers,” the platform reads.

Its emphasis on lowering energy costs also echoes Biden-era wins, highlighting projections of the IRA’s impacts out to 2030 on electricity rates and gas prices, electric vehicles, and energy efficiency upgrades.