Old solutions to new problemsinflation reduction act, energy transition, and green industrial policy in the U.S. and Brazil

Resumo

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) reoriented U.S. energy and climate policy around a financing-first architecture, expanding and re-targeting production and investment tax credits and layering them with social “bonus” provisions (prevailing wages, apprenticeships, domestic content, energy communities, and low-income criteria). This dissertation examines whether – and to what extent – such an approach should be emulated in Brazil. We first situate the IRA within a broader industrial-policy turn, using the “New Economics of Industrial Policy” framework by Juhász, Lane & Rodrik (2023) to clarify when subsidies, governance, conditionalities, and iterative public–private collaboration are complements rather than substitutes. We then review the IRA’s core climate instruments for renewable generation, carbon capture and sequestration (45Q), and clean hydrogen (45V/48(a)(15)), together with proposed U.S. Treasury/IRS rules defining incrementality, temporal matching, and deliverability for green hydrogen. Finally, we identify unresolved bottlenecks – demand/offtake formation, enabling infrastructure and permitting, and (for CCS) liability and disclosure – and discuss institutional designs that could close these gaps (e.g., e-liability/accounting and emissions-liability management), before turning to Brazil’s policy repertoire. In Brazil, we analyze legacy tax incentives (REIDI; incentivized debentures) and new instruments (infrastructure bonds; the national carbon market statute; the low-carbon hydrogen law; and the Energy Transition Acceleration Plan – PATEN). The central conclusion is circumscribed: elements of the IRA are informative benchmarks, but a wholesale replication – particularly hydrogen-heavy subsidies – would be neither sufficient nor well-aligned with Brazil’s emissions profile and institutional priorities. Brazilian policy should privilege instruments and governance that (i) target sectors with system-level abatement leverage; (ii) attach reciprocity to rents; and (iii) institutionalize feedback and error-correction – so that the transition is not only fast and clean, but also just.

Ficha do documento

Tipo

Dissertação

Ano

2023

Instituição

Fundação Getulio Vargas

Fonte

Repositório da FGV

Idioma

Inglês

Acesso

Acesso aberto

Identificador

oai:repositorio.fgv.br:10438/38945

Temas

EconomiaGovernança

Palavras-chave

Inflation reduction actDecarbonizationEnergy transitionIndustrial policyEconomiaPolítica energéticaTransição energéticaIncentivos fiscaisDesenvolvimento sustentável