The Inflation Reduction Act represents the single biggest climate investment in U.S. history, so how will these provisions influence consumers' pocketbooks and the clean energy market? Head of Global Thematic and Public Policy Research Michael Zezas and Global Head of Sustainability Research Stephen Byrd discuss.----- Transcript -----Michael Zezas Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Michael Zezas, Morgan Stanley's Head of Global Thematic and Public Policy Research.Stephen Byrd And I'm Stephen Byrd, Morgan Stanley's Global Head of Sustainability Research.Michael Zezas And on this special episode of Thoughts on the Market, we'll focus on the Inflation Reduction Act's bold attempt to stem the tide of climate change. It's Tuesday, August 23rd at noon in New York.Michael Zezas Regular listeners may have heard our previous episodes on the potential impact for the U.S. economy and on taxes from the Inflation Reduction Act. Today, we'll focus on another essential aspect of this new legislation, namely its sweeping support for clean energy, which represents the single biggest climate investment in U.S. history. So, Stephen, there's a ton of important issues to address here. Let's start with an immediate pain point that most of us deal with on a daily basis, the cost of energy. How does the Inflation Reduction Act aim to lower energy costs for Americans?Stephen Byrd The simplest way to think about this is that in the past decade, wind and solar costs in the U.S. declined every year by double digits. What's exciting about the IRA is that there are really important investments that will increase the scale of manufacturing. So, the fundamental point in terms of the benefit of the IRA really is support for a variety of clean energy investments that's going to increase efficiency, reduce per unit costs. This is becoming really essentially a very big business. To put this in context, in the last 12 months utility bills in the U.S. and most of the U.S. have increased by sometimes well into the double digits. And yet clean energy costs remain quite low. Given some of the near-term COVID supply chain dynamics, costs aren't dropping as quickly as they normally would, but before long we're going to see those reductions continue. That should result in lower power costs for customers across the U.S. and that's the single biggest benefit from a sort of deflationary point of view that I can think of around the IRA.Michael Zezas And the IRA also has a stated aim to increase American energy security. In what ways does it attempt to do that?Stephen Byrd Yeah, Michael, it's really interesting. The IRA has some very broad areas of support for domestic manufacturing of all kinds, of not just clean energy but related technologies like energy storage. And we do think that's going to likely result in quite a bit of onshoring of manufacturing activity. That is good for American energy security, that brings our sources of energy production right back home, creates jobs, reduces dependency on other governments. So, for example, the subsidy for solar manufacturing is really very large. It can be as high as essentially $0.17 a watt, and to put that into context, the selling price at the wholesale level for many of these products is around $0.30 a watt. So that subsidy for domestic manufacturing should result in real investment decisions in real U.S. factories, and that will help to improve American energy security.Michael Zezas Now, another aspect of this legislation is its attempt to substantially limit carbon emissions in the U.S. What are some of the measures that are aimed at doing this?Stephen Byrd Decarbonization is a major area of focus, just as you said, for the IRA and this shows up in many ways. I'd say the most direct way would be providing a number of incentives to increase the growth of wind and solar. So, we'll see a great deal of growth there as a result. However, there are other elements that are really interesting. One example is support for nuc