With $944 billion potentially going into the improvement of US public works across various industries, here’s how this major infusion may create new opportunities for a wide range of manufacturers and distributors.
On August 10, the US Senate passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (H.R. 3684), which now moves for consideration in the US House of Representatives. The bipartisan legislation provides $944 billion in total spending over five years, totaling $550 billion in new spending, and represents a major infusion of federal funding for US public works across various industries.
According to the White House’s most recent Fact Sheet, here are the 13 high-level targets that the bill aims to fix, repair or replace:
- Roads, Bridges, and Major Projects. The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will invest $110 billion of new funds for roads, bridges, and major projects, and reauthorize the surface transportation program for the next five years. The bill includes a total of $40 billion of new funding for bridge repair, replacement and rehabilitation.
- Safety. The legislation invests $11 billion in transportation safety programs, including a new, $5 billion Safe Streets for All program to help states and localities reduce crashes and fatalities in their communities, especially for cyclists and pedestrians. It includes a new program to provide grants to community owned utilities to replace leaky and obsolete cast iron and bare steel natural gas pipelines, some of which are over 100 years old.
- Public Transit. The legislation includes $39 billion of new investment to modernize transit, and improve accessibility for the elderly and people with disabilities. In total, the new investments and reauthorization provide $89.9 billion in guaranteed funding for public transit over the next five years.
- Passenger and Freight Rail. The legislation invests $66 billion in rail to eliminate the Amtrak maintenance backlog, modernize the Northeast Corridor, and bring world-class rail service to areas outside the northeast and mid-Atlantic. Within these totals, $22 billion would be provided as grants to Amtrak, $24 billion as federal-state partnership grants for Northeast Corridor modernization, $12 billion for partnership grants for intercity rail service, including high-speed rail, $5 billion for rail improvement and safety grants, and $3 billion for grade crossing safety improvements.
- EV Infrastructure. The bill invests $7.5 billion to build out the first-ever national network of EV chargers in the United States and is a critical element in the Biden-Harris Administration’s plan to accelerate the adoption of EVs to address the climate crisis and support domestic manufacturing jobs.
- Electric Buses & Zero-Emission Ferries. The legislation will deliver thousands of electric school buses nationwide, including in rural communities, helping school districts across the country buy clean, American-made, zero emission buses, and replace the yellow school bus fleet for America’s children. The legislation also invests $5 billion in zero emission and clean buses and $2.5 billion for ferries.
- Reconnecting Communities. The program will fund planning, design, demolition, and reconstruction of street grids, parks, or other infrastructure through $1 billion of dedicated funding in addition to historic levels of major projects funding, for which these investments could also qualify.
- Airports, Ports, and Waterways. The bill invests $17 billion in port infrastructure and $25 billion in airports to address repair and maintenance backlogs, reduce congestion and emissions near ports and airports, and drive electrification and other low-carbon technologies.
- Resilience and Western Water Infrastructure. The legislation aims to make US communities safer and its infrastructure more resilient to the impacts of climate change and cyber-attacks, with an investment of over $50 billion. This includes funds to protect against droughts, floods and wildfires, in addition to a major investment in weatherization. According to the Biden Administration, the bill is the largest investment in the resilience of physical and natural systems in American history.
- Clean Drinking Water. With a $55 billion investment, the bill makes the largest investment in clean drinking water in American history, including dedicated funding to replace lead service lines and the dangerous chemical PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl). It will also replace all of the nation’s lead pipes and service lines.
- High-Speed Internet. The legislation’s $65 billion investment – which builds on the billions of dollars provided for broadband deployment in the American Rescue Plan – will help ensure every American has access to reliable high-speed Internet with an historic investment in broadband infrastructure deployment.
- Environmental Remediation. The legislation invests $21 billion in environmental remediation, making the largest investment in addressing the legacy pollution that harms the public health of communities and neighborhoods in American history, creating good-paying union jobs in hard-hit energy communities and advancing economic and environmental justice. The bill includes funds to clean up Superfund and brownfield sites, reclaim abandoned mine land and cap orphaned gas wells.
- Power Infrastructure. With a roughly $65 billion investment, the bill will make the single largest investment in clean energy transmission in American history, upgrading its power infrastructure, including by building thousands of miles of new, resilient transmission lines to facilitate the expansion of renewable energy. It creates a new Grid Deployment Authority, invests in research and development for advanced transmission and electricity distribution technologies, and promotes smart grid technologies that deliver flexibility and resilience.
Financed through a combination of redirecting unspent emergency relief funds, targeted corporate user fees, strengthening tax enforcement when it comes to crypto currencies, and other bipartisan measures—along with revenue generated from higher economic growth as a result of the investments—the bill is now being reviewed by the House. Once passed into law, it should present a new host of opportunities for US companies looking to get involved with any or all of the initiatives outlined above.
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