U.S. congressman Sean Casten (IL-06) has released the following statement, this week, celebrating the one-year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act being signed into law:
“Since president Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law one year ago today, we’ve seen tremendous benefit through our community. In the 6th District, the IRA has saved over 4,300 Medicare beneficiaries who use insulin an average of $490 annually. For the 21,000 6th District residents who signed up for a marketplace health care plan, the IRA will save them over $1,030 on their premiums this year.
“The IRA is also the single biggest investment in clean energy technologies, like solar panels, wind turbines, and large-scale energy storage, in history. That said, our work is not done. Research shows we will fail to realize up to 80% of the pollution reduction benefits of the IRA if we do not accelerate the process of building electric transmission lines.
“Transmission lines connect the open spaces where we build most of our solar and wind power with the places where most electricity is used. Solar and wind developers won’t build without transmission lines to get their product to market. Modernizing our transmission system will also add reliability and resilience to our electricity system.
“Unfortunately, the current process of building transmission is arduous, expensive, lined with bureaucratic red tape, and too often controlled by those with a stake in prolonging the use of polluting fossil energy. In order to meet our climate goals and make our electricity more reliable and resilient, we must immediately enact reasonable permitting and transmission reform to expedite review processes. This must be Congress’s top climate action priority. Anything less is failing to do what is scientifically necessary to prevent the kinds of climate-driven crises we’ve seen around the country and the world this Summer.”
—Office of U.S. Congressman Sean Casten