MEMO: Real-World Benefits of the Build Back Better Act’s Historic Climate Investments

*** Senior Sierra Club policy staff and leadership, along with grassroots volunteers, are available to discuss the urgent need for Congress to pass the Build Back Better *** 

The House will pass the Build Back Better Act this week, and then it’s off to the Senate for final passage of this transformational legislation. In this moment, it’s crucial to remember that the impacts of this bill go far beyond intra-party politics and will have unprecedented and lasting impacts on people in communities across the country. Click here for a new factsheet that offers 34 examples of these real-world benefits. 

The Build Back Better Act includes more than 130 programs that would invest nearly $600 billion in climate action, clean energy jobs, and environmental justice. Collectively, these unprecedented investments would put us firmly on the path to achieve President Biden’s goal of cutting climate pollution in half by 2030 while creating hundreds of thousands of family-sustaining jobs and advancing racial, economic, and environmental justice.

What tangible benefits would families and communities see from these investments? To name just a few examples, the Build Back Better Act would:

Clean Transportation

• Make public buses and metro lines cleaner, more frequent, and more accessible for affordable housing residents 1
• Convert more than 60,000 diesel school buses to clean electric buses so schoolchildren can breathe clean air 2
• Cut the price of an electric vehicle by $12,500 for working and middle class families while supporting electric vehicle manufacturing at unionized U.S. factories 3
• Help build a half million electric vehicle charging stations in communities nationwide 4
• Convert 70% of U.S. Postal Service mail trucks to clean electric vehicles to reduce air and climate pollution in your neighborhood 5
• Build new high-speed rail lines like the one that will allow people to go from Houston to Dallas in 90 minutes by train instead of driving in traffic for four hours 6
• Cut the price of an electric bike by up to $900 for working and middle class families while boosting the benefits that employers offer for biking to work 7
• Help cut toxic air pollution at ports from trucks, ships, and machinery 8
• Help reconnect neighborhoods — primarily in Black and Latinx communities — that have been divided for decades by highways that reinforce systemic racism and spur pollution 9

Clean Water

• Help replace over 5 million lead service lines — about half of the national total — to deliver clean water to communities nationwide 10
• Reduce toxic runoff from old stormwater systems during heavy downpours 11

Clean Electricity

• Help the average family save about $500 each year in utility bills 12
• More than double the speed of wind and solar power expansion, bringing renewable energy to millions of additional homes each year 13
• Make it $7,000 cheaper on average to install solar panels on your rooftop 14
• Boost access to renewable energy in low-income and Indigenous communities by covering 40%-50% of the cost of solar and wind projects 15
• Offer churches, hospitals, schools, local governments, and other nonprofits the opportunity to install wind and solar power for 30% less than the normal cost 16
• Make the electric grid more reliable so that communities don’t experience disastrous grid failures like the one that killed over 100 people in Texas last February when a cold snap knocked out power for over 4 million homes 17

Community Resilience

• Support community-led efforts to clean up toxic pollution, adapt to climate change, and achieve healthier living standards in neighborhoods that have endured environmental injustice 18
• Create new jobs, support workers, and clean up pollution in communities that have been dependent on fossil fuels and communities where factories have closed 19
• Boost water supplies for communities experiencing increasing droughts 20
• Create more than 300,000 good jobs in a new Civilian Climate Corps that helps communities clean up pollution and adapt to climate change 21

Lands Protection

• Protect the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil and gas drilling, in support of the Gwich’in people’s fight to protect their way of life 22
• Protect forests for people to enjoy, for ecosystems to thrive, and for a more livable climate 23
• Cultivate urban green spaces to protect children and communities from extreme temperatures 24
• Protect wetlands that shield coastal communities from hurricanes and storms 25
• Protect coastal communities from oil spills and toxic pollution by banning new offshore oil and gas drilling in the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, and the Eastern Gulf of Mexico 26

Healthy Buildings

• Enable working and middle class families to save up to $8,000 while weatherizing their homes to reduce utility bills and pollution 27
• Make it up to $10,000 cheaper to convert your home from fossil fuel-based to electricity-based heating and cooling to slash air and climate pollution 28
• Upgrade living conditions for more than 800,000 people who live in public housing, including cutting energy costs and offering protections from storms, flooding, and other extreme weather 29
• Remove lead-based paint and other health and environmental hazards from about a half million low-income homes 30

Clean Manufacturing

• Create more than 150,000 family-sustaining jobs by helping to establish and retool factories to manufacture electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels, and other clean energy goods 31
• Reduce air and climate pollution from factories that produce steel, cement, and other energy-intensive construction materials 32

Regenerative Agriculture

• Enable more than 60,000 farmers to switch to renewable energy and machinery that uses less energy 33
• Support the efforts of more than 200,000 farmers to protect healthy soil so as to increase harvests, reduce the impacts of droughts, and trap more climate pollution 34

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 1 Section 110001 of the Build Back Better Act 

 2 Jobs to Move America estimates that it would cost $29.7 billion to fully electrify 250,000 school buses, or about $119,000 per bus. The Build Back Better Act includes $5 billion for electrification of school buses and other heavy-duty vehicles (Section 30101) while the bipartisan infrastructure bill includes an additional $2.5 billion (another $2.5 billion in the bipartisan bill is not counted, as it is also available for fossil fuel buses). The combined $7.5 billion will support the electrification of over 63,000 buses, using the Jobs to Move America cost estimate. That is about 13% of the nation’s estimated 500,000 school buses. 

3 Section 136401 of the Build Back Better Act 

4 The White House estimates that a $15 billion investment could build about 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations. The Build Back Better Act includes $7.283 billion for electric vehicle charging stations (Sections 30431 and 136405) and the bipartisan infrastructure bill includes an additional $7.5 billion. The combined $14.783 billion nearly meets the White House’s estimate of the investment needed for a half million charging stations. 

5 The Build Back Better Act includes $6 billion to electrify U.S. Postal Service (USPS) vehicles (Section 80003). USPS estimates this investment will be sufficient to electrify 70% of its mail delivery vehicles. 

 6 Section 110006 of the Build Back Better Act. See here for more information on the Houston to Dallas high-speed rail line. 

 7 Sections 136406 and 136407 of the Build Back Better Act 

 8 Section 30102 of the Build Back Better Act 

 9 Section 110003 of the Build Back Better Act 

 10 The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates it costs $4,700 on average to replace a lead service line. The Build Back Better Act includes $9.97 billion for lead service line replacement (Sections 30301 and 12002) and the bipartisan infrastructure deal includes an additional $15 billion. The combined $24.97 billion would replace more than 5.3 million lead service lines, using EPA’s average cost estimate. EPA estimates there are 6-10 million lead service lines nationwide, while the Natural Resources Defense Council estimates there are 10-13 million. Using 10 million as a mid-range estimate, the two bills would replace about half of all lead service lines nationwide.  

11 Section 110015 of the Build Back Better Act 

12 The Rhodium Group estimates that the clean energy tax credits, energy efficiency investments, and other initiatives in the Build Back Better Act, combined with additional new policies, would save the average household about $500 in annual energy costs by 2030. 

13 The Rhodium Group estimates that the wind and solar tax credits in the Build Back Better Act could support an average of 65 gigawatts of wind and solar power deployment per year for 10 years, which is more than double the record of 30 gigawatts deployed in 2020. 

14 The Build Back Better Act offers a 30% refundable tax credit to homeowners for the installation of rooftop solar and other clean electricity equipment (Section 136302). The median cost of a residential solar photovoltaic system is currently nearly $25,000. This tax credit would reduce that cost by more than $7,400. 

15 Section 136803 of the Build Back Better Act 

16 Section 136104 of the Build Back Better Act 

17 Sections 30451, 30452, 30454, and 136105 of the Build Back Better Act. See here and here for more information on the Texas power failure. 

18 Section 30202 of the Build Back Better Act 

19 Sections 30444 and 110009 of the Build Back Better Act 

20 Sections 70801, 70802, 70803, and 70804 of the Build Back Better Act 

21 The White House estimates that the Build Back Better Act’s $30 billion for the Civilian Climate Corps (Sections 26001, 26002, and 70703, among others) will create about 300,000 good jobs. 

22 Section 71201 of the Build Back Better Act 

23 Section 11003 (among others) of the Build Back Better Act 

24 Section 70706 of the Build Back Better Act 

25 Section 70201 of the Build Back Better Act 

26 Section 71301 of the Build Back Better Act 

27 Section 30411 of the Build Back Better Act 

28 Section 30412 of the Build Back Better Act 

29 The Build Back Better Act includes $65 billion for public housing improvements (Section 40001), including upgrades to boost energy and water efficiency and climate resilience. A report by the McHarg Center and Data for Progress estimates that upgrading the nation’s entire public housing stock would cost between $119 billion and $172 billion. Using the mid-range estimate of $146 billion, the Build Back Better Act will upgrade about 45% of the nation’s public housing units. With 1.8 million people living in public housing nationwide, that investment suggests benefits for more than 800,000 public housing residents.  

30 The Build Back Better Act includes $5 billion to remove lead paint and other health and safety hazards in low-income homes (Section 40102). Based on EPA figures, the average cost for removing lead paint from a home is estimated at $10,000. Using this estimate, the Build Back Better Act could remove lead paint in about 500,000 low-income homes. 

31 The Build Back Better Act includes more than $16 billion in tax credits, grants, and loans for firms to manufacture electric vehicles, solar and wind components, battery storage, and other clean energy goods (Sections 136504, 136501, 30442, and 30443). Recent economic modeling from the University of Massachusetts Amherst finds that every $1 million in public spending on electric vehicle manufacturing creates 8.7 jobs while every $1 million in public spending on wind and solar manufacturing creates 10 jobs. Using these ratios, the Build Back Better Act’s more than $16 billion in clean manufacturing investments are expected to create more than 150,000 job-years. 

32 Sections 136502, 30471, and 80008 (among others) of the Build Back Better Act 

33 The Build Back Better Act includes $2.02545 billion for the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP), which offers grants and loans to farmers and rural small businesses for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects (Section 12005). In fiscal year 2020, 1,586 farmers and rural small businesses received over $51 million in grants under REAP, yielding an average grant size of over $32,000. Using the same average, the Build Back Better Act’s more than $2 billion for REAP would yield more than 62,000 grants and loans.   

34 The Build Back Better Act includes $22.3 billion for agricultural conservation investments, including funding for four programs to back farmers’ efforts to support healthy, carbon-trapping soil (Section 15002). The White House estimates that such investments in the bill “could reach roughly 130 million cropland acres per year, representing as many as 240,000 farms.”