After years of settling for incremental improvements in their energy and climate performance due to a lack of program funding, many cities in the United States are surging ahead with measures to reduce their emissions and boost their resilience to the impacts of climate change.

“Almost overnight, the opportunity to implement changed with the passage of a series of federal infrastructure laws, including and especially the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA),” TIME Magazine reports. “The 2022 law opened up new avenues for cities to fund infrastructure projects,” after a deal between the Biden White House and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin sealed a US$370-billion climate and clean energy package, the biggest investment of its kind in U.S. history.

“In the last two years, we have seen significant strides towards meeting these goals because of the historic investment we’ve been receiving from the federal government,” Barbara Buffaloe, sustainability manager in Columbia, Missouri, told TIME climate specialist Justin Worland. As recently as 2019, the local climate action and adaptation plan warned that insufficient funding would require the college town to rebalance its spending priorities, with the possibility of introducing new taxes or fees.

Fast forward five years, and Politico says large chunks of the IRA funding remain unspent, with 19 days to go before the U.S. presidential election. But even so, “local governments are beginning to receive their slice of the billions the IRA allocated to city-led climate projects,” TIME writes. Multiple analyses in recent months have shown the lion’s share of those dollars landing in “red” states and counties that typically vote Republican; Politico calculates that more than 40% of the clean energy investment has shown up in the seven swing states that will likely decide the election.

That includes the biggest solar investment in U.S. history that will see South Korean panel maker Qcells bring 2,500 jobs to a community in Georgia.

But the impact of that funding goes far beyond the politics. “It’s an important development with implications for the lives of residents as well as the viability of [the IRA itself] and the broader fight against climate change,” TIME writes. “Much of the focus of the IRA’s impact has been on uptake by the private sector as factories pop up to take advantage of its tax incentives. But the impact in American cities, where most people live, will also have long-term political and social implications.”

That’s significant because “cities have a crucial role to play in the fight against climate change,” TIME adds. “More than half of the global population lives in urban environments, and 70% of global emissions occur in cities.”

And yet, “for most of the three decades when climate change has been an issue of global concern, cities have received short shrift.” While “national governments tend to have larger revenue streams and the credibility to negotiate with their counterparts overseas,” mayors are arguing for an essential seat at the climate table.

“We are the doers. We get things done,” London, UK Mayor Sadiq Khan told Worland. “Cities are the first responders when it comes to tackling the climate emergency.”