President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 into law on Aug. 16. The legislation provides for $485 billion to combat climate change and inflation, including more than $5 billion in incentives for low-carbon building materials in public infrastructure projects and specified government-owned buildings.
Associated Builders and Contractors has opposed the bill as a matter of spending policy. “The Democrats’ deal to hike taxes in support of hundreds of billions more in government spending while we are already contending with record-high inflation would plunge the U.S. economy into a recession,” ABC says in a statement.
The bill includes a number of provisions related to construction (see infographic on left). The goal is to reduce the United States’ carbon footprint by 40% by 2030, coinciding with the United Nations Paris Agreement’s deadline to halve global CO2 emissions.
