Inflation Reduction Act Energy Communities

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) became law on August 8, 2022. Under the law, new qualifying renewable and/or carbon-free electricity generation projects constructed in certain areas of the US, called energy communities, are eligible for bonus worth an additional 10% to the value of the production tax credit or a 10 percentage point increase in the value of the investment tax credit. The IRA does not explicitly map or list these specific communities. Instead, eligible communities are defined by a series of qualifications:

1. a brownfield site,
2. a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) or non-metropolitan statistical area with either (a) 0.17% or greater employment or (b) 25% or greater local tax revenues related to the extraction, processing, transport, or storage of coal, oil, or natural gas; and an unemployment rate at or above the national average for the previous year, or
3. a census tract containing or adjacent to (a) a coal mine closed after December 31, 1999 or (b) a coal-fired electric generating unit retired after December 31, 2009.

These maps and data layers contain GIS data for coal mines, coal-fired power plants, fossil energy related employment, and brownfield sites. Each record represents a point, tract or metropolitan statistical area and non-metropolitan statistical area with attributes including plant type, operating information, GEOID, etc. The input data used includes:

1. Brownfields – Source: EPA. No analysis was performed on this data layer. However, tract polygon layers have a column denoting brownfield presence (0 for no brownfield site, 1 if the tract contains a brownfield somewhere within the polygon).
2. Eligible Employment MSAs (“Final_Employment_Qualifying_MSAs”) – Source: US Census County Business Patterns. MSAs and non-MSA regions with employment over 0.17% in the fossil fuel industry (defined here as NAICS codes 211, 2121, 213, 23712, 324, 4247, and 486) and unemployment greater than or equal to 3.9% (the average national unemployment rate in 2021, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics).

--Possibly Eligible MSAs (“FossilFuel_Employment_Qualifying_MSAs”) are MSA and non-MSA regions that meet or exceed the 0.17% employment in the fossil fuel industry threshold but do not exceed the unemployment threshold.

--Relevant columns include:

        a) SUM_nhgis0: Total employment in 2020.

        b) SUM_nhgis1: Total unemployment in 2020.

        c) P_Unemp: Percent unemployment in 2020.

        d) Q_Unemp: Boolean column indicating if the MSA or non-MSA’s unemployment rate is at or above the national average of 3.9%.

        e) FF_Qual: Boolean column indicating if the MSA or non-MSA had employment in the fossil fuel industry at or above 0.17% in the past 11 years.

        f) final_Qual: Boolean column indicating if an MSA or non-MSA qualifies for both unemployment rate and fossil fuel employment under the IRA.

1. Retired Power Plants – Source: EIA via HFLID. Qualifying power plants were selected by use of coal in at least one generator, and if they were retired (RET_DATE) on or after January 1, 2010. This data goes through December 2021.

--Adjacent tract data was derived by Cecelia Isaac using ESRI ArcGIS Pro.

1. Abandoned Coal Mines – Source: MSHA. Mines labeled “Abandoned”, “Abandoned and Sealed” or “NonProducing” between January 1, 2000 and September 2022.

--Adjacent tract data was derived by Cecelia Isaac using ESRI ArcGIS Pro.

5) US State Borders– Source: IPUMS NHGIS.

Also included here are polygon shapefiles for Onshore Wind and Solar Candidate Project Areas from Princeton REPEAT. These files have been updated to include columns related to the energy communities.

New columns include:

1. CoalPlantTract: Boolean column indicating if the CPA is within a tract that qualifies because of a retired coal plant.
2. CoalMineTract: Boolean column indicating if the CPA is within a tract that qualifies because of a closed coal mine.
3. FossilFuelEmp: Boolean column indicating if the CPA is within an MSA or non-MSA with greater than or equal to 0.17% employment in the fossil fuel industry.
4. UnempQualification: Boolean column indicating if the CPA is within an MSA or non-MSA with greater than or equal to 0.17% employment in the fossil fuel industry.
5. MSA_non_to: The code of the MSA or non-MSA area that contains the CPA.
6. P_Unemp: The percent unemployment of the MSA or non-MSA that contains the CPA in 2021.