What is in the U.S. climate bill for me, a renter?
August 28, 2022 1:25 AM Subscribe
Setting aside all my further-left political hopes and dreams, I'm happy about the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. But I don't actually understand how it will help me, a renter, join the aspirational future of energy policy.
Seems like a lot of this bill is geared towards tax benefits for homeowners and such. Some specifics relative to me, but also similar to those of a very large proportion of people living in the US:
* I live in a big U.S. city, namely, Los Angeles. There, I work a full-time job (non-profit, though this seems irrelevant).
* At present, there is no way for me to even conceivably charge an electric vehicle at home. (I could do so at work, but usually I bike to work, so charging a car in the circumstances where I'd usually use it is a non-starter as of this writing.)
* I frequently drive 200-400 miles to visit family and friends.
* I drive a 2008 Prius and could conceivably sell it RIGHT NOW at the top of a supply chain bubble.
* I live in a 15-unit rent-controlled apartment building with roughly 27 human beings living in my building. (No one has AC and the building has bad insulation and was built in the 1920s.)
* I have a gas oven and stove in my unit, gas-powered laundry in a common space, and the rest of my life is electricity. (I'm LADWP and SoCal Gas, FWIW.)
* As of my current understanding, I will never own a home in Southern California. Moving to another region and buying a home is just sort of totally unknown and unconsidered territory, but if the bill makes a move smart somehow, I'd consider it.
* A tangent, may be relevant or not: I have been paying student loans for 21 years but because I consolidated years ago I believe I am not eligible for any Federal loan forgiveness under Biden. I'm sitting on $14k remaining.
* I'm willing to spend some money for an ethical and effective purpose, even if it is not an "investment" in future returns or otherwise doesn't redound to material benefit for me.
* I'd love a cooling heat pump, if that's relevant.
* Somewhat tangential to all of this, I'm involved in a local residential community land trust, though my own apartment is not part of that trust.
Does the IRA offer anything that I can directly opt in to?
Does the IRA portend anything that I should be looking out for or planning for?
Does the IRA make it likely that my landlord will do anything specific vis a vis climate, or that I can help influence him in that direction?
Is there anything I should be thinking about, specific to this bill and its impacts, that I may not be?
Seems like a lot of this bill is geared towards tax benefits for homeowners and such. Some specifics relative to me, but also similar to those of a very large proportion of people living in the US:
* I live in a big U.S. city, namely, Los Angeles. There, I work a full-time job (non-profit, though this seems irrelevant).
* At present, there is no way for me to even conceivably charge an electric vehicle at home. (I could do so at work, but usually I bike to work, so charging a car in the circumstances where I'd usually use it is a non-starter as of this writing.)
* I frequently drive 200-400 miles to visit family and friends.
* I drive a 2008 Prius and could conceivably sell it RIGHT NOW at the top of a supply chain bubble.
* I live in a 15-unit rent-controlled apartment building with roughly 27 human beings living in my building. (No one has AC and the building has bad insulation and was built in the 1920s.)
* I have a gas oven and stove in my unit, gas-powered laundry in a common space, and the rest of my life is electricity. (I'm LADWP and SoCal Gas, FWIW.)
* As of my current understanding, I will never own a home in Southern California. Moving to another region and buying a home is just sort of totally unknown and unconsidered territory, but if the bill makes a move smart somehow, I'd consider it.
* A tangent, may be relevant or not: I have been paying student loans for 21 years but because I consolidated years ago I believe I am not eligible for any Federal loan forgiveness under Biden. I'm sitting on $14k remaining.
* I'm willing to spend some money for an ethical and effective purpose, even if it is not an "investment" in future returns or otherwise doesn't redound to material benefit for me.
* I'd love a cooling heat pump, if that's relevant.
* Somewhat tangential to all of this, I'm involved in a local residential community land trust, though my own apartment is not part of that trust.
Does the IRA offer anything that I can directly opt in to?
Does the IRA portend anything that I should be looking out for or planning for?
Does the IRA make it likely that my landlord will do anything specific vis a vis climate, or that I can help influence him in that direction?
Is there anything I should be thinking about, specific to this bill and its impacts, that I may not be?
Looking at this summary sheet published by Senate Democrats (before the thing passed, but I think most of these provisions survived Manchin & Sinema), I can see the following things that might apply. A lot will depend on how "low-income", "middle-income", and "affordable housing" are defined and whether they apply to your situation.
posted by Johnny Assay at 5:53 AM on August 28, 2022
- "$9 billion in consumer home energy rebate programs, focused on low-income consumers, to electrify home appliances and for energy efficient retrofits." You might be able to get a rebate for an electric stove from this, assuming that you own the stove you mention; you might also be able to get a rebate for a portable heat pump. If your landlord owns the gas laundry equipment, they could get rebates for electrifying them.
- "$4,000 consumer tax credit for lower/middle income individuals to buy used- clean vehicles, and up to $7,500 tax credit to buy new clean vehicles." (I hear you about charging infrastructure, but presumably that's going to improve as California, in particular, pushes towards all vehicles being electric.)
- "$1 billion grant program to make affordable housing more energy efficient." This might apply to your landlord if you live in "affordable housing"; It also might apply to your community land trust.
- The "Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grants" and "Neighborhood Access and Equity Grants" (see pp. 3–4) also might be relevant to your land trust, depending on the types of activities it's involved in.
posted by Johnny Assay at 5:53 AM on August 28, 2022
So not to misunderstand the question, but I am also a renter in Los Angeles and there are public and private charging hotspots coming in all over. They just added a city owned, charge by the hour one to my street last week when adding a new streetlight to a previously- dark intersection , and the neighborhood council I am represented by just reviewed an application for 5 chargers from a private company to be added to a nearby street. This would be 6 chargers a very short distance from my house! I feel like an electric vehicle is a possibility for me now unlike how I felt two years ago.
posted by holyrood at 10:36 AM on August 28, 2022
posted by holyrood at 10:36 AM on August 28, 2022
According to this Boston Globe Article:
posted by Winnie the Proust at 11:56 AM on August 28, 2022
Another tax credit program extended by the inflation act, previously scheduled to expire in 2024, will, starting next year, allow homeowners to deduct up to 30 percent of the cost of transitioning to renewable heat and energy, including rooftop solar, geothermal heat pumps, and, for the first time, battery storage. That falls to 26 percent in 2033 and 22 percent in 2034.I don't understand what that means in practice, but it does look like there are ways for renters to participate.
These credits, too, can be applied retroactively for 2022.
Renters, apartment dwellers, and others who can’t install renewables can use the credit to enroll in certain community solar projects.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 11:56 AM on August 28, 2022
I consolidated all my student loans 20-ish years ago and they are all still qualified for both Biden's $10K or $20K (for people who received pell grants) forgiveness.
Also, they are still qualified for PSLF forgiveness, which should apply to you as well, if the nonprofit you work for is a 501c3. You need to accrue 10 years at a nonprofit (or govt agency etc) and you might as well apply for credit for whatever years you have put in, even if it is not yet 10 years.
HOWEVER you must apply for that PSLF waiver thing BY OCTOBER 31ST this year. And you might have to switch the loan to an income-driven plan now. With the recent massive improvements to the way income-driven plans work, this is almost certainly a good idea, but again - you MUST do this by October 31st or you miss the opportunity.
In short, you might be talking yourself out of many thousands in help with student loans just because you have heard a coupel of buzzwords. Take the time to check it out thoroughly. The only thing that might prevent you from benefitting from both the above programs is if your loans are private rather than public/subsidized type loans.
Loan consolidation is, literally, completely irrelevant.
Pardon the lecture, but they really have not done a good job explaining all these things to loan recipients.
posted by flug at 1:09 PM on August 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
Also, they are still qualified for PSLF forgiveness, which should apply to you as well, if the nonprofit you work for is a 501c3. You need to accrue 10 years at a nonprofit (or govt agency etc) and you might as well apply for credit for whatever years you have put in, even if it is not yet 10 years.
HOWEVER you must apply for that PSLF waiver thing BY OCTOBER 31ST this year. And you might have to switch the loan to an income-driven plan now. With the recent massive improvements to the way income-driven plans work, this is almost certainly a good idea, but again - you MUST do this by October 31st or you miss the opportunity.
In short, you might be talking yourself out of many thousands in help with student loans just because you have heard a coupel of buzzwords. Take the time to check it out thoroughly. The only thing that might prevent you from benefitting from both the above programs is if your loans are private rather than public/subsidized type loans.
Loan consolidation is, literally, completely irrelevant.
Pardon the lecture, but they really have not done a good job explaining all these things to loan recipients.
posted by flug at 1:09 PM on August 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
Also, regarding the Inflation Reduction Act, the really unfortunate thing that would have benefitted you directly, but that they left out of the final bill - for a completely crazy and invalid reason - is the e-bike subsidy.
It was a similar thing to the electric vehicle subsidy, except of course many, many more people would have been eligible and it could have been really transformative. And also saved a heap more emissions that electric vehicle subsidies - particularly, far more subsidies per dollar spent.
(Because electric vehicles are still big complicated heavy damn things that will create considerable emissions, even though far less than gas-powered cars, whereas when you switch to an ebike your emissions fall practically to zero instantly.)
They left it out of the final bill because the estimate for how much the subsidy would cost was just insane. They assumed they would sell hundreds to thousands of ebikes for every electric vehicle subsidy. So that made the ebike subsidy total cost look to be far more than the electric vehicle subsidy total cost - and garsh, we just CAN'T possibly spend that much on a bunch of damn bicycles, can we?
(The estimate ignored the fact that the the entire world wouldn't have been able to produce enough ebikes quickly enough to use up the entire projected subsidy amount. But, whatever.)
Anyway, that is one thing that you and many others MIGHT have been able to put to good use, but thanks to Manchin, Sinema, and of course the entire Republican Senate Caucus, you can't.
posted by flug at 1:18 PM on August 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
It was a similar thing to the electric vehicle subsidy, except of course many, many more people would have been eligible and it could have been really transformative. And also saved a heap more emissions that electric vehicle subsidies - particularly, far more subsidies per dollar spent.
(Because electric vehicles are still big complicated heavy damn things that will create considerable emissions, even though far less than gas-powered cars, whereas when you switch to an ebike your emissions fall practically to zero instantly.)
They left it out of the final bill because the estimate for how much the subsidy would cost was just insane. They assumed they would sell hundreds to thousands of ebikes for every electric vehicle subsidy. So that made the ebike subsidy total cost look to be far more than the electric vehicle subsidy total cost - and garsh, we just CAN'T possibly spend that much on a bunch of damn bicycles, can we?
(The estimate ignored the fact that the the entire world wouldn't have been able to produce enough ebikes quickly enough to use up the entire projected subsidy amount. But, whatever.)
Anyway, that is one thing that you and many others MIGHT have been able to put to good use, but thanks to Manchin, Sinema, and of course the entire Republican Senate Caucus, you can't.
- This is a decent summary of the issue of ebikes and the Inflation Reduction Act.
- This article details a couple more things in the act that will benefit city-dwelling-type-people, such as a subsidy for charging and micromobility type stations, and neighborhood access and equity grants.
posted by flug at 1:18 PM on August 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
So I THINK you were asking specifically about climate-related impacts, but in case you were interested in broader effects, the climate bill also:
* lowers the cost of some drugs (including insulin) for folks on Medicare, which might well benefit you someday, and may benefit some of your older relatives and friends more immediately;
*extends Obamacare subsidies, which might benefit you if you have an Obamacare plan (or end up on one in the near future)
posted by kristi at 11:38 AM on August 30, 2022
* lowers the cost of some drugs (including insulin) for folks on Medicare, which might well benefit you someday, and may benefit some of your older relatives and friends more immediately;
*extends Obamacare subsidies, which might benefit you if you have an Obamacare plan (or end up on one in the near future)
posted by kristi at 11:38 AM on August 30, 2022
The climate legislation package recently passed by California includes this benefit, which would be available to renters:
posted by Winnie the Proust at 5:06 PM on September 1, 2022
One of the more novel measures passed by the legislature is a $1,000 refundable tax credit to low-income Californians who don’t own cars. The legislation, the first of its kind in the country, is designed as a reward for living car free.via NYTimes.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 5:06 PM on September 1, 2022
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posted by pinochiette at 4:54 AM on August 28, 2022