One year after the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was signed into law on August 16, 2022, private industry has announced at least 210 major new clean energy and clean vehicle projects across the country, according to E2’s findings. Based on publicly available information from 178 of the 210 announcements that included new jobs and/or investment estimates, if completed the projects would create at minimum 74,181 new jobs and bring in $86.3 billion in private investments.

These announcements are expected to drive a major boost in new clean energy jobs in the coming years, compared to clean energy employment growth before the IRA. Not including 2020 job losses fueled by COVID-19 shutdowns and ensuing economic crisis, clean energy has averaged an annual increase of 117,000 jobs since 2018. The jobs and investments estimated in the more than 200 announcements would represent a sizable increase in annual employment growth in clean energy and is indicative of a coming wave of job gains on the horizon unequaled in the history of the clean energy sector — presuming normal employment gains based on overall market growth, projects announced and in development before the IRA was signed, and smaller investments and new projects that are unable to be tracked by this analysis. In addition, only 142 of the announcements included a temporary and/or permanent job creation estimate — leaving one-third of new announcements without any employment estimates as of the time of this analysis.