The Demise of the IRA: Lessons for Climate Change Policy

Date: Thursday, March 19, 2026

Time: 5:30 PM - 7 PM

Location: 2270 Sauder Industries Policy Room, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings Street, SFU Vancouver

*This is a hybrid event. If you are interested in attending this event online, please register with us via Online Admissions to access the zoom link.

About the Event:

The Inflation Reduction Act was signed into US law on Aug. 16, 2022, presenting a comprehensive climate change industrial policy for the first time in the US. The Act represented a game changing strategy towards accelerating a green and just transition, as well as an embrace of an industrial policy strategy, driven by government incentives. Since then, the IRA has been dismantled by the Trump Administration, putting climate policy backwards. This paper examines the lessons from the reversal for future climate policy.

The paper provides observations on the problems of policy design that created a vulnerability to reversal. Ironically, we see a reverse intervention by the Trump Administration towards intervention to support fossil fuels. The most promising signal is that market forces are pushing forward clean energy, thus the primary lesson is for policy advocates to reduce distortion through fossil fuel support and actions to impede clean energy.

Commentators:

Mitchell Beer is founding publisher of The Energy Mix, a non-profit community news site and e-digest on energy and climate change. Beer traces his background in renewable energy and energy efficiency to 1977, in climate change to 1997, and delivered a TEDx Ottawa talk in October, 2019 on how to listen outside the climate “bubble” to build wider buy-in for faster, deeper emission cuts. A proud moment was building a model wind turbine out of wooden stir sticks with his then-11-year-old daughter, and improv comedy practices have often been the best part of his week.

Jae Mather is the CEO of Carbon Free Group and the Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) and senior consultant for the Low Carbon Business Action (LCBA) EU-Canada Phase 2 cleantech bridge project at ClimateDoor. He has more than 25 years experience being instrumental in shaping innovation, cleantech and environmental agenda across Europe, the UK and Canada. He is the CEO & Co-founder of the Carbon Free Group which is a sustainability business incubator that built the UK’s first passive house, its first zero-carbon building and the Rural Transition Alliance Programme, which supports developers in meeting the Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) requirements and enables farmers to transition to Net Zero through soil and non-soil-based food production, renewable energy and business development. He has been the Executive Director of the Clean Energy Association of British Columbia where he supported 15 First Nations in BC with reconciliation via existing and planned renewable energy projects. He is also an advisory board member of the SFU Clean Energy Research Group (CERG).

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Host or Publisher SFU Centre for Public Policy Research