Since taking office in January, Donald Trump has been proactively attempting to do away with climate initiatives and the transition to green energy. According to the Sabin Center for Climate Change, Columbia University, Trump has backed over 50 motions to either cut back or completely scrap federal climate mitigation measures since becoming the President.

His biggest target as he went about dismantling climate programs, was the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a multi-billion dollar investment that America, under the Joe Biden Administration, made into clean energy and climate. His first step in combating the IRA was to pause funding.

But what is the Inflation Reduction Act and why does it matter whether or not Donald Trump eliminates it, you ask? Read on to find out!

The Inflation Reduction Act was passed by the US Congress in 2022, and its goal was to bring down the federal deficit while investing in clean energy and manufacturing. It’s widely considered to be the largest climate action investment in American history, allocating a whopping $369 billion for clean energy and climate projects. The IRA’s primary focus was to ensure that the US would have net zero emissions by 2030 and also aimed to boost domestic industrial production in the process.

While a chunk of the funding was reserved for further development of pre-existing clean technologies such as solar and wind, some money was pumped into new technologies that might not have been feasible without the government’s support, such as carbon capture and storage.

Various experts broke down the benefits of the IRA to TIME and lauded it. “Across the board, it was a huge spending bill that basically made clean energy cheaper, and then put on steroids the adoption of clean energy technologies in the United States,” said David Victor, professor of innovation and public policy at UC San Diego.

Speaking about how the Act encouraged private investment, Jack Ewing, said, The risk was reduced by that upfront capital provided by the government. “It made large infrastructure projects more possible, and this, in turn, crowded in a lot of private investment.”

Joanna Lewis, associate professor of energy and environment at Georgetown University, emphasized how the IRA would help America compete with other nations when it comes to clean energy.

“It would have allowed the United States to try to catch up with China in key industries, particularly in batteries for energy storage and electric vehicles. If these investments aren’t made in the next few years, then we will essentially be ceding these industries to China and others,” said Lewis.

Commenting on the freezing of funds by the Donald Trump Administration, Jack Ewing said, “There’s no doubt that if existing grant monies are attempted to be clawed back by the Trump administration, that a number of those project developers will sue. The overall message behind the executive orders does have immediate market effects.”

“There’s going to be more reticence to invest in some of these energy transition and climate-focused sectors, because the political environment is clearly less appealing for those investments now compared to what it was a year ago or six months ago during the Biden administration,” Ewing added.