SEATTLE — Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday headlined a political cheerleading session at a Seattle-based building products and services company to celebrate the first anniversary of the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
“While there is still more to do, the president and I have shown how much we can accomplish together,” Harris told about 250 people at the headquarters of McKinstry, which specializes in designing, building and modifying large facilities to make them energy-efficient.
Harris praised the IRA, for which she cast the deciding vote in a divided U.S. Senate last summer. Funding from the bill has created 175,000 clean tech jobs, she said.
Harris also spoke about the prospect of solar and wind farms springing up around the nation, especially in rural areas, leading to the installation of thousands of miles of power lines — with the accompanying jobs — to transmit that electricity to cities.
“The energy not only will be a lot cleaner, but cheaper,” she said, adding that alternative energy sources are becoming more reliable.
Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm talked about how U.S. states and other nations saw the federal government as a passive player in combating climate change until passage of the IRA.
“Other governments saw us as bringing a knife to a gunfight,” Granholm said.
Now the U.S. is the world leader in clean energy investments, she said.
“We’re back in the game, baby,” she shouted.
U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said McKinstry has grown and could double or triple its 1,000 union jobs. “Washington, we are leading the acceleration to clean energy,” she said.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) said the world has been dealing with increasing floods, melting ice caps and the massive wildfire in Maui. “This isn’t your grandma’s climate change anymore. It is a new beast,” he said.
