States don’t (yet) have the administrative capacity to smoothly implement the ambitious policies in the IRA; in this episode, policy strategist Sam Ricketts of Evergreen Action discusses how federal programs can help them get there.

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David Roberts

States are central to climate and energy policy. After the failure of the Waxman-Markey climate bill in 2010, states carried the torch of climate policy during the long decade that Democrats were locked out of majority power in Washington, DC. Now that Dems have actually passed some federal policy — and they are unlikely to pass any more anytime soon — states are once again in the spotlight, tasked with implementing that legislation to maximize its effect.

This raises the obvious question of whether states have the administrative capacity — the people, institutions, time, and money — necessary to implement ambitious federal legislation competently.

They do not, says Sam Ricketts, but they could, and there are federal programs that can help them get there.

Nobody is better positioned than Ricketts to address the issue of state readiness. He played a key role in Jay Inslee's pathbreaking presidential campaign, which was built off of successful policies in Washington and other states. Then, as senior strategist for Evergreen Action, a nonprofit he founded with other Inslee veterans, he helped shape the ambitious trio of bills the Democrats have passed in the last year and a half: the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS act, and the Inflation Reduction Act (or as advocates fondly refer to them, Uncles Bill, Chip, and Ira). Now he’s working with Evergreen and the Center for American Progress to educate and prepare state and local lawmakers for the post-IRA world.

I've known Ricketts for years, and there's nobody who better balances detailed knowledge of policy with a practical head for advocacy and activism. I'm excited to talk to him about the crucial role states will play in coming years, the kind of administrative capacity they will need, and the types of federal programs that can fund their capacity building.

So, enough of that. With no further ado, Sam Ricketts, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.

Sam Ricketts

Thanks for having me, David. Pleasure to be with you.

David Roberts

I'm so excited to talk about administrative capacity, the sexiest of all podcast topics loyal listeners know this is an ongoing obsession of mine.

Sam Ricketts

They've come for the good stuff.

David Roberts

Yes, exactly. So get ready to jump in. So I want to talk about state and local governments and whether they're up for this. But first, let's just briefly talk a little bit about just how central states and local governments have already been in climate policy in the US. So after you and I, well remember all too well the humiliating defeat of the Waxman-Markey Bill back in 2009, 2010. And after that, the sort of national scene was dead for ten years and everyone was off in the wilderness. And the only thing that was going on was states passing good legislation.

So maybe let's start by just talking about those states being kind of the laboratories for democracy as it were and how the states sort of pioneered stuff and learned stuff that then went into informing the federal legislation that was just passed.

Sam Ricketts

Indeed. So the first thing to your point, you mentioned that states and local governments have long been sort of the nation's leaders in developing and implementing climate and clean energy policy. And we're going to talk about what they need to do next in terms of implementation. But an important point, as you allude to here, is the progress that's just been given to us from Washington DC. The passage of Uncle Bill, Uncle Ira, Uncle Chip, the three climate uncles, so to speak. And the other initiatives that the Biden administration is advancing are really drawn from, inspired by, informed by the progress that states and local governments have made throughout the country.

And this progress, as you mentioned, really jump started over the course of the last decade and sort of in the interregnum period between the last attempt at climate legislation and this ultimately very successful one. But it goes back further, right. States began passing clean energy laws decades ago. Years ago. I mean, the first renewable portfolio standard to require utilities to start utilizing clean renewable electricity was actually passed in Iowa 40 years ago. That activity last went through states red, blue and purple alike through the 1990s. In the early 2000s, you really saw an uptick in states beginning to target greenhouse gas climate pollution directly with laws that like Massachusetts' Global Warming Solutions Act, notably, of course, the AB 32 law passed in California in 2006, sort of set economy-wide programs and sectoral programs advancing climate action.

And then in the 2000s, after the last failed attempt at federal climate legislation, you really saw this uptick. And states really carried the ball in a number of different ways and in ways that directly inspired the breakthroughs here. I mean, just a few of the items. In 2015, Hawaii became the first state in the country to pass a 100% clean electricity standard requiring utilities to get to all carbon-free electricity on their grid. And now over 20 states have that commitment in some form. About 15 have passed that requirement into law. And I would argue that that underlies President Biden's most important climate commitment that he's made and is trying to advance through both legislative and executive means towards 100% clean electricity by 2035.

A couple of the other things that were passed by states and indirectly informed things in IRA in particular were tax credits tied to labor standards. So to ensure that we're building not just clean energy and not just jobs, but clean energy supporting good family wage, high quality jobs. And notably that was inspired by things like the Clean Energy Transformation Act passed in Washington state and signed by my former boss, Governor Jay Inslee in 2019. You also see in IRA and throughout the Biden administration's initiatives a prioritized investment in disadvantaged communities to advance environmental and economic justice and things like President Biden's Justice40 initiative, which was itself directly inspired by the New York State Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act that had that Justice40 commitment for New York that was also passed in 2019.

So there's this rush of legislative and policy making in the second half of the last decade in particular, but really throughout the course of it just one more item because it's a favorite that really directly informs what we're seeing implemented now. And IRA is connecticut in 2011 was the first state in the country to establish a green bank. It's now been created in 23 state and local governments, I believe. And that directly, of course, inspired the creation of a greenhouse gas reduction fund, a $27 billion program in IRA that again is going to be now a critical tool for states and local governments to leverage to build the clean energy economy flowing out of IRA implementation.

So the first thing here is this progress that we now have so much of. It builds on the foundation established by states and local governments throughout the country. And now it's of course going to be a critical thing for them to turn to, really being drivers in implementation of these bills.

David Roberts

Yeah, I was going to say I wrote a piece for Vox a few years ago, I talked to you for it about the sort of general turn in policy thinking among climate people away from this sort of monomaniacal obsession with carbon pricing to what I called Standards Investments and Justice. SIJ never did quite get that term to catch on. But it wasn't just an intellectual turn. It wasn't just a sort of theoretical turn. It was very much states demonstrating that this is the politics that works, right. You can bang your head on that top-down carbon pricing wall over and over again.

It is the sector-by-sector standards and investments that work to get political buy in. So this wasn't just an idle exercise. This was very much showing the federal government what's possible and what works.

Sam Ricketts

Totally. Can I just say, you wrote eloquently about standards, investments, and justice. And really to your point, it's directly informed by what's really borne out in practical terms, particularly on state policy leadership, right? Both the politics and the policy conspired here to show a better and a different path that you're seeing inform the entirety of the Biden administration's climate agenda. They have advanced robust investments that are going to leverage even greater private sector investments to catalyze this clean energy transition. They are now utilizing federal administrative authorities to go after sector by sector rules to ensure they're holding automakers utilities, others accountable for following this clean energy trajectory that's now available to them, especially with robust public and private sector investment.

And then they've got this central commitment for the first time at the federal level to justice this confluence of factors that again is directly borne out and directly inspired by the leadership of state and local governments throughout the country. Which leads us to where I guess we've got to go next.

David Roberts

Let's go there then. So the federal government passed all this stuff and I feel like everybody kind of gets on a general level that it's states and localities that are going to have to implement all this stuff but I think most people understand that in a very vague way. So maybe let's flesh that picture out a little bit. What are the kinds of things that federal legislation does that the states and localities are going to be directly responsible for administering?

Sam Ricketts

The first thing is the Biden administration. We hear a lot of talk these days about Bidenomics and there were sort of a return at long last of industrial policy at the federal level. Targeted investments, economic strategies to really seize on the country's strengths, develop and maintain the industries we're going to need for a thriving and just and healthy economy.

David Roberts

Volts listeners or everyone else should go back and listen to my podcast with Brian Deese a month or two ago all about that subject.

Sam Ricketts

Totally. That was a great one and it really informs what's happening now in Washington DC. But also at the same time seeing industrial policy through in the country arguably has long been a larger part of the role of states and local governments, right, who implement federal dollars. I mean so many of the federal programs we know and love, the federal funding programs we know and love, be they Medicaid or education, energy and climate are dollars that the federal government or federal agencies pass down to states and to local governments and sometimes communities or individual consumers. But so much of it flows through state and local governments and then even the programs that don't directly flow through those governments they need to be the ones to take advantage of to help their companies and their consumers and their communities take advantage of clear hurdles, plan for, and execute on.

So there's three different types of investments I point to here in these bills that are all going to be part of what states and cities need to be administering or being attentive to as they do so. And all of them are direct opportunities and some of them are massive like untold opportunities. So there are direct grant programs, there are financing programs and then there are tax incentives and all of which state governments, local governments need to be attentive to all three of these. So just give a few examples. Direct grant programs. There's a few different programs or actually a number of different programs of course in these bills that are provided to state governments or to local governments that they can then turn and leverage for climate, for equity, for public health, for good jobs.

One is the Department of Energy has much discussed building energy rebate programs. Two different programs, one supporting energy, Home Energy Retrofits, another supporting electric appliances. Those programs are actually being run by the Department of Energy, but they're actually going to be dollars. The Department of Energy first provides to all state energy offices for those state energy offices to turn around and operationalize, working with contractors, working with local governments and providing consumers directly with rebates. Another program is the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which I mentioned is a program that combines a couple of different elements, but there's an element of it that provides money directly to states and local governments for them to deploy or to set up programs to deploy solar and storage technologies in disadvantaged communities.

A third example of this direct grant program that I think we're going to talk about a little bit more is the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants, which is an investment program directly for state and local governments basically only, and tribal and territorial governments to be able to plan and then execute on programs and policies and measures to decrease climate pollution and build their own clean energy and industrial strategies that suit their needs.

David Roberts

Yeah, we're going to come back to that one.

Sam Ricketts

Then the second category is financing programs, programs the federal government has or is newly established where they provide financing tools, loan, loan guarantees, other financial mechanisms that individual companies and projects can use to leverage more private capital, to deploy zero emission technologies or build new manufacturing facilities. And there's a few different ones of these. One is again the new GGRF for Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund which is a new program being stood up at the EPA. Another is the USDA Rural Utilities Service has about $10 billion for rural electric cooperatives to be able to leverage to securitize and retire their coal plants and instead build clean and renewable energy for sort of a next generation rural electrification agenda for the country.

And then a third, the DOE Loan Guarantee program has got hundreds of billions of dollars of financing authority that states can help work with their local companies and projects to leverage to deploy much greater private sector capital. And this DOE one I'm particularly excited about because of its intersection with states, there's actually reforms made to the program in the infrastructure law. In Bill, Uncle Bill, the state gets a chance to work with the Department of Energy loan guarantee program to waive the technology requirement requiring this project to utilize a quote, unquote, innovative technology, one that hasn't been used before and if the state is a co-investor in the project, can leverage much greater private sector financing into deploying that project. So really a reform, a tweak to the DOE Loan Guarantee program that allows it to be more accessible and more usable, particularly state clean energy financing institutions.

And then finally — let me come to the big one — because the majority of the investments flowing through IRA are actually tax credits. Sort of automatic spending in reverse for the federal government, which are resources that an individual project owner, company, or under IRA. Actual public sector entities like public utilities, nonprofit institutions can take and leverage greater private sector or co investment in speeding much more investment into clean energy, into renewable energy, into individual consumers purchasing of electric vehicles or heat pumps, clean manufacturing facilities. The tax credits make up the majority of the funding in the bill and notably so state and local governments need to be aware of them so that they can help their companies and their consumers and their communities take advantage of those incentives.

And notably those tax incentives I mentioned have this new reform called direct pay where they are now eligible for use by those who don't have tax liability, including public institutions, including local governments who are operating with the, let's say municipal utility or even nonprofit institutions. And this amount of money notably is uncapped. So it can be as much money as we can all spend.

David Roberts

A theme Volts returns to frequently there's no upper limit to the amount that these tax credits could get sent out. There's no upper limit to the amount that could be spent on them. So as I pound the table and say over and over again the size of this bill, the size of IRA is not a fixed thing. It will be as big as there are people applying for the tax credits. So anyone out there who can organize and educate people and have more people apply for those tax credits, that's going to be a bigger bill. So states and localities here really have their hands on the lever of not only how to implement the bill, but literally how big the bill is.

Sam Ricketts

Absolutely. There's much talk about how this is a $370 billion or $380 billion investment. I mean the reality is there's a fixed number of grant programs or financing programs that Congress and President Biden have invested in. And then there are these tax incentives that are uncapped and that can range much greater. They are literally only tied to the amount of money that can be spent on projects that they can then benefit from those incentives.

David Roberts

Yeah, Goldman Sachs I think, estimates $1.2 trillion rather than $3.7 billion, which is an enormous spread. All of which has to do with how many projects are going to qualify for these tax credits. And that is something that people can have control over.

Sam Ricketts

That's right. And the Treasury Department writes the rules of these things and they'll be the ones to dole out an individual cash payment as a direct pay grant or to send the tax refund to the company that takes advantage of the tax credit. But they're not out there searching out projects, working to ensure permitting works. They're not out there making sure communities are aware of these things. They're not there working hand-in-glove with companies on economic development projects. That is what states do. That is what counties do. That is what cities do. That's what individual community groups do.

But there is this massive opportunity for companies, for communities, for individual consumers to take advantage of these incentives and the rest of these investments and whether or not they do that well is going to be a thing that state and local leadership is going to play a key role in seeing through.

David Roberts

Exactly. You can have as much economic development as you can muster. Right? There's no upper limit. Like you can have all the economic development you want if you're willing to put in the work, organizing and pursuing it.

Sam Ricketts

That's right. And as we know we need to move urgently and build as much of this as we can because we are under some very tight climate math, right?

David Roberts

So we've established then that states have been an inspiration to the federal government and now we've established that the new federal legislation that has been passed in these past couple of years very importantly requires states and local governments to implement it. And indeed how big and how efficacious the bills are is more or less up to states and local governments, how well they organize and get it done. So then this brings us to the inevitable next question which is are they ready for this? Do they have economic development offices that are aware of the tax credits and understand the procedures and understand where to direct them and understand how to attract companies around them?

Do local governments have the offices to do outreach to local communities to clue them in on these tax credits? Do they have the sort of like manpower to do the research and just create the programs that can spend all this grant money? Are states and cities ready for the tsunami of money that is heading their way? Do they have the administrative capacity they need?

Sam Ricketts

Well, look, there's a gap. I like to think of it as an urgent opportunity.

David Roberts

It's an opportunity.

Sam Ricketts

It's an opportunity. An urgent one. Look, there's a definitive gap that exists across states and local governments and also tribal governments here too. I should probably mention that state and local and tribal governments are all sort of implicated as part of this sub-national government space of entities that are going to be helping to deploy dollars and are going to be dispositive about the success of these bills. They're all different. People regularly bunch them together. And here we're spending most time talking about state governments, a little bit about local governments and I'm going to continue to zero in on states because it's where I've worked before and it's what I'm particularly focused on in this moment.

But they're all going to be really important in this work and they all lack capacity, certainly to varying degrees. But I'll say state governments even just sticking with states often lack capacity. The state agencies, even the ones who have been sort of leading the most on climate and sometimes in many respects do lack capacity. And this is simply people in seats doing the work. They can lack capacity because of budgets regularly. That's the biggest reason. And then there is kind of like how the tax credits in the bill can be spent up to the level of funding that we put into them.

They'll get out what we put in. The same thing here with governmental capacity at the subnational level, there is an opportunity to do more because state agencies are regularly, red, blue and purple states alike, lacking in manpower to be able to take maximum advantage of these dollars.

David Roberts

Do you think it's fair to say that because industrial policy has been out of vogue and we've been living under this sort of well, I'll just use the word neoliberalism for the last 30 or 40 years with this sort of notion that markets are going to accomplish everything. Do you think that is part of the explanation for why some of this state capacity is lacking or has atrophied a little bit?

Sam Ricketts

Absolutely. I mean, the last 40 years of public sector disinvestment absolutely plays a role here. In particular, the public sector got hit hard after the Great Recession in particular.

David Roberts

Right.

Sam Ricketts

And budgets have only recently kind of gotten back even to those levels. They got hit again, obviously, recently during the COVID hit. And there has been investment from the federal level. Think of their COVID recovery dollars, some of the stuff that's implicated in debates right now in Congress about what can be clawed back, these are vital. Just like public sector capacity building investments, state and local budgets have regained relative health kind of quickly after COVID recovery.

But there still gaps. And there are gaps in particular in these areas where with state environmental, clean energy, industrial development that we've not invested as a society into sufficiently. And that's what leaves us with a gap.

David Roberts

And if you go look at part of the COVID money was grants to states arguably too much. But if you go look at what those states spent those grants on, it's not necessarily building their long-term administrative capacity. Sadly, obviously if you lack manpower, you lack manpower, and that's a problem. But maybe try to give us a little better sense of what are the concrete dangers here, what are the opportunities that states and cities are going to miss or botch lacking capacity? Like, one thing I worry about, and maybe this is silly, we can talk about the politics of this separately, but Obama and his stimulus money went overboard, bent over backward to make sure that none of it was misappropriated, that there was no fraud or graft.

He put so much energy into that for all the good it did him. But one of the things I worry about is states and cities that lack administrative capacity also seems to open more room for shenanigans and graft and just petty local politics kind of stuff. So flesh out a little bit the danger of lacking administrative capacity.

Sam Ricketts

A few different things, first of all, it's opportunity cost. These are all we talk often in climate policy in terms of carrots and sticks. And these are all carrots. And to the point here about being able to spend as much as we can spend. Well, carrots only deliver the nutritional value if people are eating the carrots. Right? Don't get me wrong, most people like carrots. Carrots are delicious. I like carrots. But in order to eat that carrot, people need to know that it's there. They need to know how to access it, how to ...

David Roberts

Right, somebody's got to go dig it up.

Sam Ricketts

Yes, right.

David Roberts

I don't know how far we can push this metaphor.

Sam Ricketts

We could take this metaphor, but that's an opportunity cost. And if there's people who companies don't know or can't access them, if the infrastructure is not built, if the community isn't aware, consumers aren't aware, that's going to result in less money being spent here.

David Roberts

Carrots going uneaten.

Sam Ricketts

Yes, carrots going uneaten. Thank you for grabbing that metaphor. Another thing here, and this is less of an administrative capacity challenge as it is more of wrong priorities or leadership challenges. Money being spent on the wrong thing, which is also, I mean, having administrative capacity and having it focused on the right things is critically important here. There has been some discussion about the infrastructure law, which is the bipartisan infrastructure bill and it's transportation infrastructure spending and how there is an opportunity and this is really an opportunity that exists under law with state governments and local governments, not the federal government, to use those dollars flexibly for low carbon transportation projects, not simply widening freeways and investing in more roads.

That is a challenge. It's a challenge we're not always seeing fare out in the right direction.

David Roberts

I was just reading this morning a story in E&E about some of that infrastructure money being used for a giant kajillion dollar highway widening project outside of Houston that would wipe out huge swaths of low income community just like classic old school dumbass highway mistakes, but now paid for with our new infrastructure money. So yeah, can you stop that? Is there anything that can be done about that? Like states are going to do what they're going to do? Well, I guess advocates can pay attention.

Sam Ricketts

Yeah. No, the first thing to do is to be attentive to the issue and then to develop the strategies to address it. Sometimes the states who are investing in those projects are the same ones who have made ambitious climate commitments. And it sure would be helpful for people to point out that maybe how the incongruence of those things. But the final area where things I don't want to say could go wrong. But the final area that really calls forth the need for state leadership is that states need to lead here again and the next generation of clean energy leadership, right?

Not only do they need to maximize the uptake of dollars for the job creation, for the equitable economic opportunity, for the emissions reductions that can be catalyzed by those dollars, but they also need to hold utility companies and automakers and building developers and the heavy industry accountable for using those dollars and push forward the next generation of policies that are going to cut emissions and drive the clean energy transformation. And people talk about states versus federal climate leadership and people talk about like states taking the baton now that the federal government's passed it. And I totally reject the premise.

As someone who's worked before at the state level in a governor's office, think of it much more as like a band where the state and local governments are the rhythm section, the drums and the bass, if you will. Keeping time and just always keeping a level of climate and clean energy progress going even while the federal government fits and starts. Like a lead guitarist will riff on stage and then disappear. We'll see that happen here. Even the last couple of years while President Biden and Congress have been hard at work passing these bills and taking executive action, states have been leading too.

Right, you've seen the next breakthroughs in state climate and clean energy policy continue to occur, whether that's New Jersey's groundbreaking cumulative impacts, environmental justice law, that's Washington State's Climate Commitment Act, that's Illinois's Clean Energy Jobs Act, et cetera, et cetera. And so the states need to take the next step and especially now that Congress is going to be divided and in that way states will have to take the baton because the lead guitarist is off the stage again.

David Roberts

Yeah, exactly. He's backstage smoking a joint.

Sam Ricketts

It's not entirely fair because President Biden is of course advancing things through administrative action. But especially for the time being, while we don't see major congressional action again on the horizon, states are going to have that central role in driving forward the nation's energy progress again.

David Roberts

I feel like this is a little bit underemphasized aspect of all this is that one thing states can do with all this tsunami of money that's coming down on is just use it to boost their own legislation. Like this is going to change the financial and social and political landscape in a way that is going to make more ambitious policy easier. And especially if states are smart about how they do that, right? Like a smart state can use all this money to soften the ground, to go further, to get more ambitious on climate.

Sam Ricketts

And just on that point, a few places to point to. For one, it's not all legislative. I mean public utility commissions who oversee utilities need to know that the electricity market, the system is entirely changed for the country now and the integrated resource plans that the utilities had provided them before IRA passed are not really worth the paper they were printed. On anymore because the economics of energy generation throughout the country has fundamentally changed. You add in federal rules coming down governing criteria or carbon pollution from power plants, another knock that utility commissions need to be aware of as they're engaging with utilities that they are regulating.

And the utilities are saying we need this rate increase or this deadline extension or this thing or that thing. That work. That is capacity and that is the decision at that state level by utility commissioners, appointed by the governors or sometimes elected by voters.

David Roberts

Wait. Just before you move on from that, I just want to pound the table on it a little bit, because when I think about I spend a lot of time thinking about sort of like, what are the potential impediments to this legislation doing as good as it could do. I think about workforce and NIMBY-ism, et cetera, et cetera. But one of the things I come back to is sort of utility intransigence or ignorance or intransigence or some mix thereof. I can imagine if utilities took the amount of money that's being dumped on clean energy seriously, as you say, it would completely transform all their plans, right?

Every utility in the country, now that this bill is passed, should be back at the drawing board, completely rethinking what they're doing. But of course many of them for various incentive reasons, don't want to do that and don't see a way to make as much money doing that or just are stuck in their ways or have relationships, old boy network relationships that they don't want to upset, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The way to handle that impediment is with beefed up well informed utility commissions, which, as you say, is 100% a state capacity issue. It just means spending the money, getting the staff in place, getting the research done, really preparing them to force utilities to toe the line.

Sam Ricketts

Totally.

David Roberts

Anyway, I just wanted to emphasize that because I think it's a hugely under discussed and important piece.

Sam Ricketts

Well, not just a few other areas where states have been stepping forward and taking advantage already of that point to Minnesota, which just earlier this year, at the very beginning of the year, passed 100% clean electricity standard, taking advantage of these new investments. I mean, the leadership of State Representative Jamie Long and Governor Tim Walls and others in the state to really bring that over the finish line had been a long time coming and they've been fighting against legislative inertia, but Minnesota did that. But they've also passed a bill to explicitly tasking the administration to maximize the flow of federal funds.

David Roberts

Interesting.

Sam Ricketts

And Minnesota is one of a few states, also looking at Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, a few others who are in the process of establishing nonprofit financial institutions, particularly to take advantage of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Funds green finance program. Some states are passing incentives to sort of layer on what the federal government is providing and in some places to go beyond what the federal government has passed. Colorado just passed a robust suite of incentives and policies to go further.

David Roberts

Yes, including for EVs, because a lot of EVs are not going to be available for credits for quite a while. There's this huge national controversy over this. Colorado just stepped in and be like, well, we're going to loosen the criteria and subsidize all those EVs that are falling out of the federal subsidies, which is like, well done, Colorado.

Sam Ricketts

Well done. Exactly. Many states have established infrastructure coordinators housed by their governor or one of their agencies to coordinate across their state and with their city and county governments and stakeholders to maximize investment flows. Some of those have worked well and some of them haven't, state by state. But a key thing is there are states who are deploying different strategies to build capacity and coordinate a strategy around how to do this. Another interesting thing about it is it's happening in blue and red and purple states alike. Some of the major investments you're seeing, some of the big job creators, the battery manufacturing facilities, the big new projects are actually being announced or sighted and invested in red states or purple states.

David Roberts

Most, as I understand it, a rather large preponderance, is going to red states. Yeah, if I'm a state legislator or say I work in a state agency, I'm listening to this and I'm nodding and I'm saying, "Yes, I would love to have more effing capacity." Like, tell me something I don't know. I'm starving for capacity. I'd love to be able to do all this stuff." But state budgets are state budgets. Unlike the federal government, the state can't just print more money. So it's dependent on sort of business cycle year to year, dependent on booms and busts, and often have a lot of trouble finding stable funding for capacity.

So let's talk about where states can go to get some money and help building capacity. As it happens, Uncle Ira also contains some of that. So tell me about the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program, CPRG. What is it and what's it for?

Sam Ricketts

So the CPRG, the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants Program in IRA, is, I think, one of the most exciting provisions in the law. It is a new $5 billion grant program housed at the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, that can provide the opportunity to invest in state and local and tribal government capacity and to give states and tribal governments who want to lead additional resources, to empower them to do so, to lead in the clean energy and the industrial strategies that suit their unique needs and strengths and that will challenge them to compete amongst each other for the best plans most deserving of federal investment. To help them go further.

David Roberts

Right. So there's two basic buckets here, both of which are interesting, but talk first about the money for planning.

Sam Ricketts

So this is based on a program President Biden first proposed in his American Jobs Plan, State Clean Energy Challenge Grants, which was at the very beginning of a very long and arduous legislative process. We don't need to recap in detail now, but is worth its own story. The program contains three different parts: $250 million for planning grants that are in the process of being executed right now to all states, to all territories, about 70 to 80 of the nation's largest municipal statistical areas, MSAs, and then to a number of tribal nations. There is going to be later on this year, Part B, the $4.6 billion Implementation Grant round, which is like where the big money comes in.

David Roberts

Help to implement the aforementioned plans.

Sam Ricketts

Exactly. With federal money to implement some of perhaps the best of the aforementioned plans. And then there is also, as an aside, because it's important, because it's about capacity building, $140 million in federal administrative costs that the Federal Government can use for its own cost of administering this program and can use to better support state and local governments and tribal governments with technical assistance. So, worth keeping an eye on that third bucket as well. But, obviously, the $250 million out to states and local governments and tribes right now, providing capacity as we speak and then providing opportunity for more money down the line.

David Roberts

So that first bucket is for anybody who submits a plan.

Sam Ricketts

Yes. And this is a great innovation. This is capacity building. Really excited to see how EPA is carrying out the Planning Grant round of this. It's some of the first money that's going to go out grant wise under IRA, every state, provided they submit a notice of intent to participate that was due at the end of March. And then, provided they submit a work plan and application that was due at the end of April, has an opportunity to receive a $3 million grant that they put in the agency of their choosing, whether that's the Governor's Office or the Energy Office or the Department of Environmental Protection or otherwise.

Every MSA gets a million dollars as well. Tribes also get investment, as I mentioned, as do territories. But these investments directly build capacity. They can use them to hire staff, hire consultants, build high quality tools they need, like greenhouse gas inventories, or cover other administrative costs of not just applying for the Implementation Grant in the future, but to take advantage of the rest of the money passed in IRA.

David Roberts

Right. When you invest and build the capacity, the capacity is there. Once you use it for this plan, it's still there, and you can use it for other things, like these investments in administrative capacity, pay back richly over time.

Sam Ricketts

That's right.

David Roberts

And so then the Implementation Grants, this is not going to be a give money to everybody who applies thing. This is going to be more of a competition type of thing.

Sam Ricketts

Yes. So the Planning Grant round is intended by congress to be spread widely. And I'm pleased to see how EPA has done that and done that quickly to make sure dollars are flowing in everywhere. Again, to address both like, hey, you can use this money to apply for an implementation grant in the future, but hey, you can also use this money to build yourself some capacity inside of your agencies because of all the other things that are flowing. But yes, then later this year, we're expecting an implementation grant announcement. EPA says it would come late summer, maybe it's the fall.

We're hoping, the royal we all of us hoping together, they move these dollars quickly in order to get the dollars out the door quickly, certainly as early as they can in 2024. But these would really be grants that would bolster capacity and could reward those states and local governments who come forward with the plans that show they're going to lead to the greatest catalytic change. And what I'm hoping to see what I and others are hoping to see from them with this is really investing in the state driven, local driven strategies that fit their unique needs and that reduce the maximum amount of climate pollution and achieve those breakthroughs in places that are additional to that which may occur otherwise without these grants or that which may be possible otherwise, given these states unique policy environments.

David Roberts

And this is not a new format here the idea that states are competing for federal money, the whole Race to the Top idea, this is not the first time this has been tried with federal grants.

Sam Ricketts

Indeed, it's not. Actually, a very similar amount of money was invested in a program called the Race to the Top Challenge Grants that the Obama administration executed about a decade ago, about $4 million that was spread around. I think twelve states were awarded grants that ranged in size from $75 million to $700 million or something, and those grants went to those states to pass or implement innovative leading edge education policies. But the fascinating thing about the program that I think should inform how the EPA thinks about this program is it wasn't only the states that got grants that executed their policies.

Everyone got to work writing a plan. And the majority of states, even those who didn't get a grant, would later go on to implement at least some of those policies.

David Roberts

Yes, this is what I always used to say about the Clean Power Plan, too, right? I mean, one of the that Obama tried and failed to pass, one of the great benefits of it is that it would have made every utility at least think about this stuff. And it's just a fact that once you start thinking about it, once you start planning, once you start doing the numbers, you realize, like, oh, these are good things to do regardless whether you get the federal money or not, right? So just catalyzing the planning itself does so much to generate future action.

Sam Ricketts

The Clean Power Plan is a great example of this, right? Because notably, utilities met targets much faster than they would have even if the plan had ...

David Roberts

Actually catalyzed it without even passing it all. Look at the ...

Sam Ricketts

And it catalyzed planning ... Actually that's a good example for this particular topic as well because having been in a state government at that time and been part of some of those conversations, it catalyzed planning not only by the utilities in the industry, but it actually catalyzed planning at the state government level. For the first time in many places you actually had environmental regulators who were going to be charged with implementing the Clean Power Plan, working with the PUC that regulates the utilities, working with the State Energy Office that writes the State's energy strategy.

David Roberts

Right, which is a brand new thing. So let me ask you to editorialize a little bit. You got this $4.6 billion bucket of money that you can use to help states and localities and tribal governments implement the plans that they sent to you previously. Obviously there's a ton of latitude within that. There's a ton of approaches you could take that you could do bunches and bunches and bunches of little grants. You could make it your mission to sort of give at least a little bit of money to everybody who has a plan. Or you could try to sort of concentrate money on a couple of big plans that you think could be transformative or could serve as an example to other states or some mix.

So how would you like to see EPA approach handing this money out?

Sam Ricketts

It's a great question. EPA has wide latitude as to how they design and execute this Implementation Grant Program round. And I mentioned it's $4.6 billion. I mean, recall that we were talking just a bit ago about they have an opportunity here to do a couple of different things. One is build capacity in states and local governments basically across the board, right? Because everyone needs some version of help here in order to take advantage of all of the resources that are here. But then they also have an opportunity to reward those states and local governments who are going to take advantage of that next generation of clean energy industrial policy leadership who want to use the resources to go further.

David Roberts

Right. You can fund the laggards to get them up to the starting line or you could fund the leaders

Sam Ricketts

And you can do a little bit of both. Like you can cover that for one, using some of the money, a small chunk of the money to build additional capacity. Recall that capacity building investments already been made by EPA with the Planning Grant round. What happens if they did that with basically a second planning Grant round or maybe a second, twice of the size, Planning Grant round? And that would give some money across the board to continue building capacity which, as we've just talked about, is a ubiquitous problem regardless of the state's level of leadership on clean energy.

And then you could save the majority of the funding to slice up for a select number of grants that can range from eight to nine digits of major investments. That can help provide a locus of organization and momentum for that state and local government to execute on a truly ambitious clean energy industrial strategy, again unique to its own needs, and ensuring that especially EPA should be looking out for opportunities to invest in clean energy leadership where it wouldn't be otherwise occurring. So additionality is key here, I think the EPA should obviously also be looking at plans that are going to support disadvantaged communities.

David Roberts

I meant to ask about that specifically, actually, isn't the 40% rule that 40% of all these monies have to go to disadvantaged communities? Does that apply to this bucket as well?

Sam Ricketts

Indeed it does. Actually, there's two different ways that sort of equity applies to the requirements that the administration should set out for. One, to your point, this is one of the programs that falls under the Biden Administration's Justice40 Initiative, meaning that applicants should be showing how no less than 40% of the investment benefits from their plan are going to benefit disadvantaged communities. And there's actually a second one in the statute which Congress said EPA has got to require these plans to show how they're going to reduce climate pollution both overall and in disadvantaged and low income communities.

So a couple of different ways. EPA already also in the planning grant guidance has required states to work with their city governments in developing their plans or municipal governments, and they've encouraged them also to work with disadvantaged communities. And that's an opportunity here for EPA and the Implementation Grant round as well to task applicants to show how they're going to work with and benefit disadvantaged communities with their investments, how they're going to support good jobs with their strategies. EPA has latitude here as to how to design this program. I think also there's an opportunity here to encourage states and local governments to work together, whether that's in a region and are in multiple parts of the country.

This is a time for creative strategies and for calling forth sort of that unique next generation of state clean energy leadership that we're going to need to see now and throughout the coming decade.

David Roberts

Right, one more note about this program before we move on and wrap up, because I just personally found it so delightful and clever. Listeners will recall when Obama said, "Hey, states, how would you like to have billions and billions of dollars of free money to help have better health care for your poor people?" And red states just flat turned it down. They turned down free money, which is insane, but certainly something you can imagine happening here too. But there's actually a somewhat clever and innovative feature of this program meant to address that eventuality. So tell us about that.

Sam Ricketts

Indeed, this is a really innovative piece of what EPA has done with this program. I mentioned earlier that $3 million of planning grant money is available to all states. What they had to do was submit a notice of intent to participate and follow that on with an application and a work plan. Notably, if a state chose to decline that $3 million grant, the money wouldn't dry up or disappear. It would actually be available to the largest metropolitan statistical areas in that state, MSAs in that state and across the country. And so the dollars would go to somebody and it kind of provides a double incentive for the states to say yes.

And notably, they did. 46 out of 50 states submitted a notice of intent to participate and receive their $3 million.

David Roberts

Yeah, it's one thing to say no to money. It's another thing to say no to money when you know your nemeses in your blue cities are going to get the money you're turning down. That's such a clever twist.

Sam Ricketts

And we want some national governments tool one to say yes to this, right. Because if they take the money, they're going to go build a plan that's going to reduce emissions. It might be their unique flavor of that. It should be their unique flavor of that. But it gives them an opportunity to put people in seats and to start designing strategies that are going to reduce climate pollution and that are going to allow them to build the industrial strategy that's going to work for them in the 21st century clean energy economy. And we're going to need everyone doing that eventually at some point.

David Roberts

At every level, okay, by way of wrapping up then, could we touch on I mean, this is a big $5 billion and especially $5 billion is how big is money these days? Who can judge? But like $5 billion when you're talking about state budgets is quite a bit of money. You can move some needles with that. Are there other federal programs that states can draw on or states and cities specifically to help them build administrative capacity?

Sam Ricketts

Really good question. The first thing I want to say is these investments will allow states and cities and tribal governments and territories to take advantage of the rest of the funding flows in IRA and Bill and CHIPS in new and more ways like we're talking about because they're going to build the capacity that empowers them to do so. The second part is though, there's not a lot of capacity building types of investments in these bills. There are a couple. I think the other main one spend a lot of time thinking about is the state energy program of the Department of Energy, which is the program that Department of Energy uses to support state energy programs throughout the country.

Sometimes they provide, frankly, the only funding that underpins a state energy program in some states. So a vital program, not a lot of money. It's actually money that came through that program was reauthorized and funded through the Bipartisan infrastructure law, not through IRA. But there aren't a lot of dollars in capacity building. There are other capacity building programs and technical assistance programs. Federal government and EPA actually has just announced investments in a number of TICTACs. I'm forgetting what precisely that stands for other than a delicious breath mint, which are regional entities that are going to work to provide technical assistance for disadvantaged communities in particular to help them take advantage of and community based organizations.

So there's the thriving communities program. There's a suite of federal TA programs, but not a lot that go directly into juicing the capacity of states and local governments throughout the country.

David Roberts

Right. It does seem though, like if you're a state and you're given money to do X, it makes perfect sense to spend some portion of that money to build the capacity to do X, right? It seems like you could states could spend a lot of different buckets, at least a little bit on capacity because otherwise otherwise you can't really take advantage of the money.

Sam Ricketts

No, absolutely. And there's other piece of it. The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund has some dollars that can be used for particular assistance. There are others, don't get me wrong. However, the flexibility provided to individual states to look across programs, some of them will get very tied into a grant associated with this particular strategy. And that's a little bit different than empowering the state or the city or the county to design its own strategy that works for it or to shift from one day to the next from one program or one project to the next, which is also a challenge.

David Roberts

Right. Okay, final question. We've been talking about governmental capacity, basically administrative capacity, which is great in rules. Is there anything that just ordinary people advocates or activists or maybe philanthropies, private philanthropies can do on this subject other than just like pay attention and cheerlead?

Sam Ricketts

Yeah, I mean, the first thing to know, as with most things, is that this is a challenge worthy of attention. That's sort of first things first. Lots of effort went in over many years to getting these bills passed for many people. Right. And there's a whole apparatus of advocacy that zeroed in on that for a very long time, as you and I know. And this is kind of a different line of work. Implementation is kind of a different line of work and it's the talk of the town now, but it's very much like attention to state and local governments is going to be dispositive in our success or failure with these bills and what we're trying to do with decarbonization and with building a just and thriving clean energy economy.

And that the attention that advocates need to provide, just like they've provided it at the halls of Congress, just like they provide it at President Biden and at his EPA and at his Interior Department, et cetera. They need to not be providing it with their City Council, with their state legislature, with their Governor's Office, with their Public Utility Commission. In some ways, it's not advocacy. In some ways, it's partnership with spreading the word to disadvantaged communities, to individual consumers that, hey, there's incentives available to you, there are investments available to you. Let's go take advantage of them and build some new, clean, better futures for our communities here.

David Roberts

Awesome. This has been excellent, Sam. And I bet if state and city people are listening to this, they are gratified to hear it wrapped up and get a little focus and direction. So thank you so much for all your work over the years. And also thanks for coming on.

Sam Ricketts

Thanks for having me, David. Real pleasure as ever.

David Roberts

Thank you for listening to the Volts podcast. It is ad-free, powered entirely by listeners like you. If you value conversations like this, please consider becoming a paid Volt subscriber at volts.wtf. Yes, that's volts.wtf, so that I can continue doing this work. Thank you so much, and I'll see you next time.

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It's up to states to implement IRA. Are they ready?

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