Washington D.C. — In response to the House Ways and Means Committee’s release of its climate and clean energy portion of the Build Back Better Act, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) released the following statement from Senior Director of Government Affairs Matthew Davis:

“Thank you to Chairman Neal, Subcommittee Chairman Thompson, and other champions for this package of ten year, full value, flexible clean energy tax incentives that is a huge and essential part of reducing emissions across the electricity, transportation, manufacturing, and building sectors. This tax package could get Congress almost halfway to meeting the Climate Test and doing their part to reduce emissions 50% by 2030 — the goal that President Biden set and science and justice require. Critically, Ways and Means’ portion of the Build Back Better Act also directs investments for solar development in low-income communities, makes new and used electric vehicles more accessible to all consumers, and provides investments to programs researching and addressing environmental justice, all while supporting the creation of good paying jobs here in the U.S. The Ways and Means Committee has made great progress and we look forward to the committee debating, further improving, and marking up this section to reduce emissions and advance justice and jobs even further.”

This package is in line with the overarching emissions reductions targets, as mentioned above, and in specific in the Climate Test letter and the Clean Incentives Coalition letter, both of which LCV signed. The following adjustments to this section would deliver even larger overall emissions reductions that our children and families desperately need:

• incentivizing domestic production of clean energy and vehicle components with new production tax credits,
• repealing fossil fuel subsidies,
• providing refundability for solar and other renewable energy systems installed on people’s homes,
• removing additional extra support for existing nuclear power, and
• targeting refundable carbon sequestration incentives only for industrial applications and direct air capture.

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