Inside 5 red districts flush with climate cash

By Robin Bravender | 10/16/2024 01:28 PM EDT

Investments spurred by Democrats’ climate law poured into these red districts in swing states. Will that give Harris an edge over Trump in November? 

Photo collage of hands with money over a map of the United States

Illustration by Claudine Hellmuth/POLITICO (source images via iStock)

The Biden administration’s behemoth climate law signed in 2022 sparked a clean energy investment frenzy in deep red regions all over the United States, including districts represented by some of the administration’s most fervent critics in Congress who voted against that law.

Much of the cash from the climate law, which Democrats dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act, is going into the swing states where voters could soon decide whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump inhabits the White House next year.

Of the $361 billion in clean energy and manufacturing projects announced since the law’s passage and eligible for tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act, about $73 billion of those projects are located in the seven swing states likely to decide the next president, according to data compiled by Rhodium Group and MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research. That means 20 percent of the announced investments are in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

With just three weeks to go until the Nov. 5 election, Trump and Harris are neck and neck in the polls in each of those battleground states.

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