Analysts say there’s a lesson in that: The new jobs at these green factories may function as a political game-changer. “That may be an implicit long-term strategy for the Democrats: With domestic manufacturing likely in traditional Republican districts, the partisan split may soften on renewables,” Timothy Fox, an analyst at ClearView Energy Partners, told me.
Some Republicans in Georgia also see these factories as politically beneficial. Governor Brian Kemp, in his successful campaign for re-election, touted a surge in green jobs across the Peach State. There’s a battery plant so massive that it stretches half-a-mile along a freeway northeast of Atlanta — and more facilities are on the way. Hyundai Motor Co., for instance, just started building a $5.5 billion electric-vehicle plant near Savannah.
This was one of the most important things the IRA will do, change the politics around clean energy. Clean energy production is going to be the jobs on the ground that people see in lots of parts of the country that were left behind.
That is going to change the politics of future climate legislation, and what is possible. We might even see this in the 118th Congress coming up with a razor thin Republican majority.
It's always more complicated 