Over 35 Years Combating the Climate Crisis

Nancy Pelosi has made climate the flagship issue of her Speakership. Under her committed leadership, House Democrats have led the charge to save the planet and paved the way toward America's clean energy future.

Speaker Pelosi was a key leader in enacting the landmark Inflation Reduction Act, which delivered $369 billion to combat the climate crisis – the biggest and boldest investment in human history – without a single Republican vote. This law alone puts America on a path to slash carbon pollution by 40 percent by 2030.

The Inflation Reduction Act's transformative investments are accelerating America's transition to a clean energy economy: creating an estimated nine million new jobs, saving families up to $1,000 per year on energy bills, supporting industries of the future such as electric vehicles, and advancing America's energy independence. At the same time, the law delivered $60 billion in environmental justice initiatives so that all communities feel the benefits of a cleaner, greener economy.

The overwhelming majority of the climate provisions in the law originated under Pelosi's leadership in the House. After retaking the Majority in 2018, Speaker Pelosi quickly reestablished the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. This Committee brought together key stakeholders including labor, industry, agriculture, scientists, faith leaders, environmentalists and young people to craft its groundbreaking Climate Crisis Action Plan. Guided by this roadmap, Pelosi led the design and House passage of the Build Back Better Act: the largest-ever investment in fighting the climate crisis, which served as the foundation for the Inflation Reduction Act.

Under the Biden Administration, Speaker Pelosi engineered House passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. This bipartisan law delivered historic investments in public transit to reduce pollution in communities across the country, secured the largest investment in passenger rail since the creation of Amtrak and deployed affordable high speed internet connectivity nationwide. She also negotiated the CHIPS and Science Act – a law that further reoriented federal scientific investment toward clean energy and climate solutions.

This long-lasting, generation-defining progress builds on advancements Pelosi pioneered during her first Speakership. In 2007, she led enactment of the bipartisan, comprehensive Energy Independence and Security Act: legislation that raised vehicle fuel efficiency standards for the first time in three decades and made a game-changing commitment to America's homegrown, carbon-reducing biofuels. The law was projected to reduce carbon pollution by the equivalent of taking tens of millions of cars off the road for a year by 2020.

Shortly after President Obama took office, she engineered the enactment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which delivered $69 billion in new investments in clean energy to help the economy recover from the financial crisis. She also led House passage of the groundbreaking American Clean Energy and Security Act to create clean energy jobs, combat the climate crisis and transition America to a clean energy economy.

Under the Trump Administration, Pelosi was the preeminent American voice on the world stage reassuring the international community that America remained committed to addressing the climate crisis. After regaining the Speakership in 2019, she led the House in passing the Climate Action Now legislation, which required the United States to remain in the Paris Agreement. In November 2019, she led a Congressional delegation to COP25 in Madrid to make clear that the United States still intended to meet its Paris commitments. In negotiations over the 2020 omnibus government funding law, Pelosi secured new regulations of super-pollutants and critical federal energy policy reforms.

A longtime leader on conservation and the environment abroad, Pelosi secured passage of the Pelosi Amendment in 1989. This global tool continues to stand as a pillar of equity and justice in development finance – used across the world to assess the environmental impacts of development. This important victory for transparency and sustainability has offered impacted communities a powerful platform to seek remedy for the harms of unchecked development.