In today’s episode — the first of a two-part dispatch — Political Climate co-host Emily Domenech takes us behind the scenes of the 2024 Republican National Convention to chat candidly with lawmakers.
Emily talks with Rep. John Curtis of Utah, Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa, as well as advocates like Chris Barnard of the American Conservation Coalition and Heather Reams of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions.
This first installment focuses on the incremental shift within the GOP to change the conversation around climate change. Emily and her guests also explore the long-held belief in energy independence, and consider whether soaring demand for energy in the U.S. shifts the policy conversation.
This episode of Political Climate was made possible by ClearPath Action, a conservative energy advocacy organization focused on reducing global emissions.
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Transcript
Heather Reams: It really started at the playground with my daughter. And there was kind of trash on the ground, and I didn’t like the look of that pond over there, and I didn’t want her playing around there. And I was like, “Caroline, get over here. Stay away from that.” And that was kind of like, wait, I need the world to be a cleaner place, a better place. I need to do something about it.
As a lifelong Republican, I recognize that the message that I carry isn’t what most Republicans carry, and it is a new message. I’ve had friends tell me, “Wait, I thought you were a Republican. You believe the climate is changing?” Since when you care about the environment, does it mean you’re less of a Republican? So that was it. It was kind of that in recognizing that generations ahead, what we have to do to protect this planet is really important, but we also have a responsibility as a country to lead as well, and I love America. So just balancing that in some way, it feels like that’s what I do every day, and it’s important.
Julia Pyper: Welcome to a special episode of Political Climate. I’m Julia Pyper. At this year’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, the presidential nominee didn’t offer much to inspire voters on clean energy policy.
Donald Trump: They spent trillions of dollars on things having to do with the Green New Scam. It’s a scam.
Julia Pyper: Yet at the same time, the RNC proved to be a venue for newfound momentum and interest in clean energy and pro-climate policies among some Republican leaders. Thanks to the support of Clear Path Action, a conservative energy advocacy organization focused on reducing global emissions, our own co-host, Emily Domenech and producer Max Savage Levenson were able to travel to Milwaukee to speak to the leaders working to enact change within the GOP.
In today’s episode, the first of a two-part dispatch from the RNC where we’ll go behind the scenes with lawmakers, including Representative John Curtis of Utah and Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa. And we’ll bring you candid interviews from advocates like Chris Barnard of the Youth-focused American Conservation Coalition, and Heather Reams of Citizens for Responsible Energy solutions. That was Heather you heard at the top of the show.
In this first episode from the RNC, we’re going to explore a handful of questions like, how has a faction of vocally pro-climate lawmakers grown inside the GOP? What does an all-of-the-above approach to energy look like in practice? And what does energy independence really mean to the GOP? Without further ado, let me hand it over to Emily. If you’re joining in for the first time, Emily served as Senior Energy Advisor to Speakers of the House, Kevin McCarthy and Mike Johnson, and is now a Senior Vice President at Boundary Stone. Hey Emily, I’m excited to hear what you learned at the RNC this year.
Emily Domenech: Thanks, Julia. I’m so excited to present all this stuff for our listeners. It was a really fun trip.
Julia Pyper: I heard you also got your steps in. It was quite the hustle of just getting around town and doing all the meetings.
Emily Domenech: We absolutely did. I think we earned our keep this week, and met with more folks than I would’ve thought. And it was really exciting to see people be interested in coming on the pod, and frankly being interested in having a discussion about climate.
Julia Pyper: Love it. Well shout out to Max, our producer, as well, I know he got his steps in, too. Our co-host, Brandon Hurlbut won’t be joining us today. We’re giving him a break to digest the news on the Democratic side of the aisle, but we’ll have him back soon enough.
And at the end of this episode, I will catch up with you, Emily, about some of the takeaways. We’ll unpack some of the interviews that you had. For now though, here’s part one of Political Climate’s dispatch from the 2024 Republican National Convention.
Emily Domenech: On the second night of the RNC, something truly unprecedented happened. Leaders gathered for an event championing clean energy. Called the Conservative Climate Reception, the event was hosted by a series of affiliated groups including ClearPath, CRES, and ACC. It took place a few miles west of the chaos of the main Convention at the Mitchell Domes, a trio of futuristic looking glass domes containing different ecosystems, a desert dome, a tropical dome, and a floral dome.
At the event, a few leaders, including Representatives Curtis and Miller-Meeks, and former Trump Chief of Staff Reince Priebus gave short speeches, but mostly people were there to meet and greet in the cheery lobby, take tours of the domes, and of course, talk climate policy.
Down at the end of a long hallway through a series of emergency exits, we set up an impromptu recording studio next to a huge greenhouse. Over the course of a few hours, lawmakers and advocates joined us to chat about their perspectives on the Republican National Convention and climate policy. Honestly, I couldn’t think of anyone better to kick off the afternoon than Utah representative John Curtis. Curtis founded the House Conservative Climate Caucus in 2021. A month ago, in late June, he beat out a crowded field of opponents, including a Trump-backed candidate, to win the GOP’s nomination to run for Senate in Utah this November.
Rep. John Curtis: John Curtis, I represent Utah’s third congressional district. And, is that not a full sentence?
Emily Domenech: No, I was just saying I was waiting for the, “And I’m running for Senate in Utah.”
Rep. John Curtis: So you want a grammatically correct full sentence?
Max Savage Levenson: There was a lot of suspense.
Rep. John Curtis: Iâll do it in my radio voice.. Hi, I’m John Curtis, I represent Utah’s third congressional district, the best district in the United States.
Emily Domenech: Can you give us a personal experience or two from growing up or in your political career that inspired you to get involved in climate policy?
Rep. John Curtis: The one I would probably go back to was a very long time ago before you were even born, I was a boy scout, and my scout master took me to the top of Kings Peak, which is the tallest peak in Utah. It’s 13,000 something feet. And I never will forget looking out for as far as the eye can see, nature without the influence of man, and experiences like that planted within me, I think a seed that we all have to leave the earth better than we found it. And that’s one of the ones, the early ones I would go back to that just left a real strong impression on me.
Emily Domenech: Curtis talked to us about the formation of the Conservative Climate Caucus, and what he sees as an evolution on clean energy policy within the GOP. Tell me a little bit about what inspired you to do the Conservative Climate Caucus, and what you sort of look back on as your legacy as you step away from it.
Rep. John Curtis: Well, you were there and saw it all, and I think it’s fair to say when I started this, particularly in the house, it’s a little different in the Senate, you just needed to say the word climate as a Republican in the house. And if you even uttered the word climate, you made people nervous. So you’ll remember when we started talking about, hey, I’m going to pull people together to talk about climate, we made people nervous. And it was uncomfortable for leadership, it was uncomfortable for everybody. But I knew that we were not articulating well how we felt, and it was not coming across well. So we were very good at telling people what we didn’t like, and wouldn’t tell them what we did like. And the reality of it is, as I spent time with it, there are a host of suggestions and ideas that are right in line with conservatives. And most conservatives feel like they have to choose between “drill, baby drill” and Green New Deal, and there was no place to land.
And so wanting to create that, first of all for myself, and then once I created it for myself other Republicans, is what led to the formation of the Conservative Climate Caucus. If climate came up in my committee energy and Commerce 5, 6, 7 years ago, it would quickly devolve to a debate about the science. Today if climate comes up in that same committee meeting between Republicans and Democrats, it evolves to a debate about methods. And I think that’s really cool. That we’re now saying, here’s our ideas, and here’s why we think we can actually reduce more emissions without destroying the economy, without losing energy independence, keeping prices affordable and reliable, and still reduce emissions.
Emily Domenech: We also spoke to Jeremy Harrell, the CEO of ClearPath. He brought a wide-angle perspective to bear on that same shift.
Jeremy Harrell: I came to ClearPath seven years ago having worked for Republicans in the House and the Senate for over a decade. And those are members who range from main street Republicans, to very conservative members, to one of the biggest swing votes in the United States Senate. And I saw firsthand members across the political spectrum and our party who wanted to lead on these issues, but there wasn’t an ecosystem behind them to support them with interesting ideas that were Republican ideas, limited government ideas, market-oriented ideas. There wasn’t a strong apparatus to equip them with how to talk about these issues and message on these types of issues.
And most importantly, there wasn’t political backing behind them either. I worked for Senator Dean Heller from Nevada, and there were organizations out there that there was nothing that he could do that was going to get him applaud, regardless of where he reached across the aisle on these type of issues. And it was really frustrating. And so I wanted to come to a place like ClearPath to build out that ecosystem, and really encourage these ideas, because I think it’s good for long-term bipartisan support for energy security and climate.
Emily Domenech: Another member of Congress gave us a pointed example of what that lack of an ecosystem looked like in practice.
Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks: I’m Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Iowa one coming in as a freshman into Congress in 2021. I had already talked about these issues at a state level, and I was a state senator, and I was talking with some young individuals who wanted to meet with me, and was invited to go to Utah, I think it was February of 2021, and I think there were about 20 of us at that meeting, and just decided I was going to join this group of people. And then later decided I was going to go to COP, and there was a lot of chagrin about me going to COP. And so it was like the campaign team didn’t want me to go, the official team didn’t want me to go, the consultants didn’t want me to go, the congressional office, no one wanted me to go. And they’re all telling me that, “You can’t go.” And my husband will tell you, “If you tell Mariannette she can’t do something, then she will definitely do whatever it is you tell her she can’t do.”
And so I just said, “I am going to COP.” And if you’re concerned about how I talk about this as a Republican, I’m going to talk about my state. I’m there to serve my state. I’m there to help my constituents in my district, to my state and to my country, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Because if we don’t, on the world stage, talk about agriculture’s contribution to reducing admissions, somehow in all of this climate dialogue, people have forgotten about photosynthesis.
You want to capture carbon, grow organic things. And in growing things you capture carbon. And then in that organic material, you can use that organic material to create ethanol, to create soy biodiesel, to use manure in digesters and to create energy, both thermal energy, as well as sell electricity back to the grid. You can use, we have compressed renewable natural gas. I mean the options are limitless if we would allow ourselves to think beyond right now. And too often I think when it comes to climate and the environment, people think only very static, but the world is dynamic. Information is dynamic. Knowledge builds upon itself, and we can innovate, we can improvise, we can adapt, we can pivot. And as Republicans, that’s what we do best, and that’s what America does best.
Emily Domenech: Advocates working on the manufacturing side have seen a similar shift play out. Here’s Jason Grumet, the CEO of the American Clean Power Association, speaking to the Infrastructure and Jobs Act.
Jason Grumet: So there’s been this very destructive 20-year debate about climate change that really didn’t move the national interest forward. And fortunately three years ago the country kind of came together and said, why don’t we focus on what America does best, which is to invest and innovate in American technologies that create jobs and economic growth. And that’s what in fact the country’s doing, it’s what our national policy is supporting, it’s what the companies are doing.
So we’re actually finding less people who are trying to divide the debate. The forces on the edges are getting smaller, and therefore they’re getting louder and angrier. But actually there is a much larger consensus around investment in American technology. And so we’re actually finding that the policies that the Congress adopted a few years ago are having the desired effect. A tremendous amount of private capital is coming to create jobs, and industries, and manufacturing here in the U.S. And so the temperature in the real world is becoming much cooler, while the politics, of course, will remain spicy for a while.
Emily Domenech: While we were chatting with lawmakers and advocates, a conservative activist took the podium in the main room to discuss this movement from the perspective of a younger generation. This is Chris Barnard, president of the American Conservation Coalition.
Chris Barnard: Well first of all, thank you everyone for being here today, at what really is a historic event. First time something like this has happened at a Republican convention, that we have a Conservative Climate Reception. And you know what that means? It means that conservatives are reclaiming leadership over environmental issues.
As a young conservative, I always grew up telling myself I’m conservative on everything except for the environment. That’s where I’m left-wing. And that really was a problem for me. I had my environmental passion on the one hand and my conservative political passion on the other hand, and it felt like those two things were always in tension, and I know it’s no longer true. I know that conservative leaders are at the table. I know that young people across the country are looking at the people in this room, the members of Congress in this room, at your leadership, and giving them hope for a brighter future, that they don’t have to leave their conservative values at the door when talking about climate and environmental issues.
Emily Domenech: Virtually everyone we interviewed framed clean energy in the context of energy independence, and America’s need to become less reliant on China to provide the materials and equipment for American energy production. Do you think that the growing bipartisan opposition to Chinese influence is something that actually helps us solve some of these climate problems?
Rep. John Curtis: Yeah, but I’ll tell you, it is still this huge, almost like we’re blinded to the fact that we, to reach our, not just our climate goals, but our energy goals, we need some of these critical minerals. We need some of these resources that we have in the United States, and we won’t let people go.
Emily Domenech: Doesn’t make any sense.
Rep. John Curtis: But we’ll turn the blind eye to it being done under conditions that we don’t control in another country. Emissions, OSHA, human rights, all those things are violated, and we could control it here and have the minerals, and yet we’re not getting it done.
Emily Domenech: Yeah, I think I talk about that some here on the podcast, which is that if you are really serious about investments in renewables, you have to be serious about mining in America.
Rep. John Curtis: Yeah. Otherwise we’re fooling ourselves, and we’re going to be dependent. We’re going to wake up and be dependent on an enemy for these critical minerals.
Emily Domenech: Heather Reams of CRES emphasized that this approach has found bipartisan support.
Heather Reams: Polling that we have shows that regardless of party, people are against exporting a lot of these dollars over to China. Doesn’t matter, that’s not a political issue, that’s American issue, right. So some of the bills that have been passed are helping to more onshore, and there’s also looking at friend shoring working with our allies even in North America like Canada, Mexico and others, Australia and other G7 countries around the world. I have no problem having these kinds of different kinds of energy, but make sure we’re creating American jobs, and we’re shoring up our national security. It’s not what we’re doing if we’re overly reliant on China.
Emily Domenech: We also caught up with Chris Barnard of ACC at his Airbnb. He said that this message has really resonated with young voters.
Chris Barnard: Yeah, youth voters really care about China. I’m not sure they really know all that much about the IRA. Like if you look at polling, even most democratic voters that are diehard climate activists don’t know about the IRA, but young voters are concerned that we are basically outsourcing our energy future to China.
For a long time, we were worried about OPEC and the fact that our oil and gas supply chains were reliant on countries in the Middle East. Now there’s a very real risk that our clean energy supply chains are going to be reliant on countries like China. They dominate 80+ percent of critical mineral supply chains, solar supply chains, battery supply chains, all the technologies we’re going to need to be successful, to be energy independent and dominant, those are the things that China right now is actually dominating us on. And so young people really are acutely aware of that, they don’t want their future to be dominated by China.
And so a lot of what we talk about is, why don’t we do it here? We can do it in America, but that requires the political will to do it. It requires us to do it faster, to actually empower the private sector to do this, to do things like permitting reform. And it’s not just about saying all these things, again, but actually doing it, and going down and having the hard work of implementing these policies.
Emily Domenech: But shaking up the supply chain isn’t as easy as flipping a switch. We spoke to Jim Murphy, the president of Invenergy, a multinational power generation company. He offered some candid insight on the challenges of going all in on Made in America.
I’ve seen, coming from Capitol Hill, I’ve seen just growing bipartisan sentiment that we’ve got to get China out of our critical supply chains. I think y’all obviously are responding to some of that with your move into manufacturing. How do we get more folks in the energy industry, particularly on the developer end, to address this problem?
Jim Murphy: One thing that we need to do is to be more patient with the process. We have to start at the end and then work our way to the beginning. And by that I mean we have to start at the easiest part of the supply chain to domesticate. And for example, in solar, we’re doing solar panel manufacturing in Ohio. Why did we do it there? Because there is no opportunity to bring domestic upstream content. So we have to start with the downstream and build out the system that way. So it’s our intention, and we would really like to be able to bring the whole supply chain on shore, but we got to go step by step. And so we’re starting with the panels.
One thing I want to point out here in the way that we did it, and this is a little controversial, but I want to just point it out. Our decision to get into solar panel manufacturing was to do it with a Chinese partner. Why? Because we don’t have the technology. We have the technology, and that technology went to China, and it got improved, and enhanced, and now we want to bring that technology home. So we went with one of our suppliers to be a partner in the facility. We own the real estate, we own the building, we have the majority interest in the facility, but we took that partner. And we’re having to deal with some flack because of that, but we think it was the right thing to do. In fact, we think it was exactly the right thing to do to get this train moving. And now we’ve got that going, now we can look at the next component upstream, and we’re very interested in moving into the next step of the supply chain.
Emily Domenech: During the RNC, we regularly heard lawmakers and advocates championing an “all-of-the-above approach to energy policy.” This strategy is nothing new. Leaders from former Speaker of the House, John Boehner to President Obama have embraced it for more than two decades. But US energy demand has grown dramatically in the past few years, and many insiders believe we need to maximize our available resources to meet it. Here’s Representative Miller-Meeks’ summary of our rising energy demand.
Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks: So energy demands right now, we can’t keep up. You see that there’re brownouts in California. We’re not producing enough energy, and that’s not producing enough energy without bringing electrical vehicles online, and without AI and data centers.
So every COP I’ve attended, the one thing I can tell you, every single COP has acknowledged, everybody, no matter where they are on this spectrum of environment and climate and energy, everybody acknowledges that energy demand is going up, it is not going down. We don’t produce enough energy currently for the demands. The demands are increasing in the future, and this is without even developing, third-world countries. But developed countries, AI and data centers use enough energy that you could power Des Moines.
Emily Domenech: We also spoke to North Dakota’s lone representative Kelly Armstrong, who’s running for governor of his state this year. Armstrong gave a good example of what all of the above can look like in practice.
Rep. Kelly Armstrong: Congressman Kelly Armstrong, I represent the whole state of North Dakota. I do the job of 34 Texans. I always used to tell people if you wanted to do all of the above energy, come to my house in Dickinson and have dinner. And within 30 miles of my house, you have the southern patch of the oil boom, which is the Bakken, and so you have oil, you have natural gas. You go 10 miles south of my house and you have Brady 1 and Brady 2, which combined is the largest wind farm in the state of North Dakota. You go 20 miles east, and you’ve got the Red Trail Energy ethanol plant, which is the first class one carbon capture ethanol plant in the country.
People on the eastern part of my old state senate district work in the coal industry. We don’t have solar yet, and we haven’t done nuclear yet, but if you’re talking about all of the above energy, we got… Oh, Marathon and ADM have a renewable diesel facility five miles to the west. So when you talk all of the above, we literally have all of it. We have wind, we have gas, we have oil, we have coal, we have ethanol, we have biodiesel. And turns out we have a ton of people growing wheat, and corn, and canola, and trying to figure out to get all those things to market so everybody can buy a loaf of bread.
Emily Domenech: Representative Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma offered insights from her own state.
Rep. Stephanie Bice: Hi, I’m Congresswoman Stephanie Bice, and I represent Oklahoma’s fifth Congressional District, which is the Oklahoma City metro area and surrounding counties. It’s interesting because most people think of Oklahoma as a predominantly oil and gas driven state, and there is some truth to that. 25% of Oklahoma’s state revenues actually come from the oil and gas industry.
But I think what people may be surprised to know is that Oklahoma also has literally an all-of-the-above energy approach, so really anything that produces energy is game. We have hydropower, which most people would not think about in Oklahoma, with the Grand River Dam Authority up in the northeast part of the state. We have a ton of wind, particularly in the western part of the state where it is flatlands, and as the song goes, the wind does come sweeping down the plains. So you have tremendous amount of wind production out in Western Oklahoma. Certainly solar, I think this last week it was 100 degrees in Oklahoma every day, so the sun shined bright. And then certainly oil and natural gas, and we’re actually one of the top five producers of natural gas in the country.
Emily Domenech: Heather Reams of CRES argued that Republicans should lean into this all-of-the-above strategy. She also pointed out that lawmakers whose districts have a lot of solar and wind power tend to support them.
Heather Reams: We believe that those technologies, that we should use every technology at our disposal to try to lower emissions, but to also not sacrifice our economy. So it’s kind of like this tension that’s there. Obviously you’re hear from the left, “Oh, we have to sacrifice, we have to keep it in the ground. We have to reduce choices.” We’re like, “Nope, we want a lot of choices. The more choices, the better, in fact.” So that’s kind of one of the differences.
Here at the RNC, we also talk climate. And talking climate, the RNC doesn’t really necessarily always go along, and it should. What we do in America, we are cleaner than any other country in the world. How we produce things, how we build things, how we mine things, and these type of technologies and ways we do things need to be exported around the world. So really it’s say, don’t hide from this, Republicans. Embrace it.
Emily Domenech: So you, CRES has pretty exclusively, they’ve been very explicit about supporting solar and wind and renewables as part of your platform. That’s a little different than some of the other organizations in this space on the right. How has that been received by Republicans, and what’s your message to folks who are wary about being pro-renewable?
Heather Reams: Yeah, I think there’s concern also about being not only being pro-renewable, but also kind of a green subsidy, right? And that I think there’s a fiscal argument that goes into that, and it’s really not about the energy source, but really about the fiscal responsibility, so as a Republican, I understand that.
But you talk to those same Republicans who are from the districts for solar is strong or where wind is strong, and then they’re like, “Well, this is part of our fabric of our economy.” We need wind energy. We need lots of energy. We need energy any way we can get it, really, and the demand for energy is going up, so why not use American homegrown energy versus importing it from someplace else?
Emily Domenech: Jim Murphy of Invenergy explained what all-of-the-above looks like in the context of his power generation business.
Jim Murphy: Invenergy was founded in 2001, and our business is developer, owner, and operator of utility scale power generation facilities. We are an all-of-the-above type producer. We have wind, solar, battery, energy storage. We have natural gas-fired power plants in our fleet as well. We operate all of our own facilities. We have a world-class operating team. We operate for ourselves and for other parties on a contract basis. We have also recently moved into some adjacencies in the industry.
For example, long distance transmission. We now have six major HVDC lines in development. I think we’re probably the most prolific developer in that arena right now. We also recently moved into manufacturing space, which was a stretch for us, but it was something that we wanted to do to have more control over our own supply chain coming out of COVID, coming out of some of the restrictions on bringing in imported product, especially on the solar side. So we have now got in production a five gigawatt solar panel manufacturing facility in Ohio near Columbus, and we will be producing our millionth panel here in the near term, and hiring our 1000th employee at that facility. So we’re very excited about that, and we’ll be at full production by the end of this year. We’ve already installed some of our panels at one of our projects in Ohio, which was very exciting for us.
Emily Domenech: Let’s wrap up with a bit of a curveball from Jason Grumet of the American Clean Power Association. Grumet framed the dynamic between clean power and natural gas as a free market competition.
Jason Grumet: We are an organization that has this naive affinity for facts and math. Clean power is the fastest growing source of energy, but we’re about 20% right now of the American energy economy, which means 80% is still scum from someplace else, and we’re a huge fan of the 20% of the power that’s produced carbon-free from nuclear, huge supporters of the 8 or 9% that’s coming from hydro, and we are now in a competition with gas for the rest. And we just say, look, it’s a race, right? Faster you guys get cleaner, the longer you get to hang around, the faster we become reliable 24/7, the more market share we’re going to… And like, game on. Let’s just have an actual competition based on the national interests of clean, affordable, and reliable.
And I think that the gas industry is making real strides, but they’ve got real challenges. I mean the obligation to make sure that the energy is affordable, reliable, and clean, none of those are negotiable. We got to get all three, and so I think it’s just going to be a question of how quickly natural gas can in fact achieve the low to no carbon emissions that they aspire to.
Julia Pyper: That’s it for this first dispatch from the RNC, but before we wrap up, Emily, I do have a couple of questions for you. How should we square Trump’s rhetoric on climate and energy with this way more nuanced approach we’re hearing from some of the folks you spoke to?
Emily Domenech: So I think we should never expect anything less than bombastic from President Trump. That’s been his style through his entire time in politics. But oftentimes I tell people to, we have to sort of parse between the rhetoric on stage at a rally, and what we really see in practice and policy, and I think we can look to the first Trump administration to see that. While we did see decisions that were very much like messaging-focused things from the Trump administration, I think we saw overall one, number one in the first three years of the Trump administration, declining emissions from the United States. And I choose the first three years on purpose because I like to leave out the COVID year, since that’s an anomaly. So we saw policies put in place that still continue to reduce emissions here in the US.
But I think the second thing to consider here is that we’ve actually seen some more nuance from President Trump on this issue. Take for example, before the presidential debate, which is, this is something that I think got lost in the news obviously, for obvious reasons after the presidential debate. But prior to the debate, President Trump tweeted out a set of climate talking points that he’d received from his prior, his previous EPA administrator, Andy Wheeler.
I think that’s relevant, not just because President Trump was looking for climate talking points, but because he read what Andy Wheeler put together on this sort of all-of-the-above global emissions-focused approach, and he thought it was good enough that he wanted to share it with his followers. So I tell people to keep that in mind as we look forward to what potential policies could look like. The real lawmakers are the people who we talk to at the RNC, are the congressmen, the senators, the advocacy groups who are going to engage with the administration going forward, and we need to equally weigh these two concepts.
Julia Pyper: Yeah, I think it is interesting to note that he’s not shying away from the topic of clean air, clean water, environmentalism, even climate to some extent. It sort of shows how that issue has worked its way into frankly, the mainstream, and you can’t just totally shut it down. You have to at least make an economic reason why maybe you don’t support some of those policies. I think that’s notable, but for a lot of folks who work on these issues every day, I think they would find some of those policies under the Trump administration severely lacking.
And we’ve talked about natural gas as a major decarbonizing force, but also we still haven’t got our arms around the methane issue, for instance, and how do we actually make sure we are fully decarbonizing while fossil fuels maintain a big role in the mix? And we know that President Trump has taken the stance of “drill, baby drill” for oil and gas. So I think that’s going to still give a lot of heartburn for people on how he would tackle the climate issue.
Emily Domenech: And I would just say to that end, I would say, let’s look at the facts here, which is that we have a growing global energy demand, and a big portion of that through 2050 is going to be met by fossil fuels. So the question is how do we make those fossil fuels as clean as we possibly can? Because that’s the only way we get China and India to get on board with what we’re trying to do here in the United States.
And I think that export innovation, frankly permitting approach to this issue, is something that President Trump’s administration could perhaps tackle better. I use the permitting issue as an example all the time. The NEPA rules under Trump were much more friendly to development and construction here in the United States, and that’s across the board for both for renewables, for manufacturing, for the roads and bridges we need to build a robust economy, and for oil and gas. And so I think we have to think about where do we balance those two things.
The other note I’ll make is, and I should have mentioned this sooner, I actually think the vice presidential nominee, JD Vance, is a great example of sort of another flavor of Republicans on this issue. While he may not focus on climate as the top of his ticket, he talks about this anti-China, pro-U.S manufacturing, pro-worker agenda, which oftentimes lines up with a clean energy agenda. It might not sound the same, but those policy outcomes have a lot of overlap, and that to me shows a lot of opportunity for common ground.
Julia Pyper: Where I think the rubber is really going to hit the road is around the future of largely tax credits and other incentives included in the Inflation Reduction Act. You know we can’t really get away from that topic, it’s on a lot of people’s minds. And we’ve seen different stakeholders in the Republican Party come out with different views on that, just how aggressive they would be in fully repealing versus weakening, I know we’ve got a lot of prognostications out there. President Trump has still said he would weaken, if not get rid of the Inflation Reduction Act in some of his public-facing comments. I guess coming out of the RNC, have your views on the fate of the IRA changed?
Emily Domenech: No, and I’ll tell you why. I think number one, I think you have to start with a negotiating position, and it doesn’t surprise me whatsoever that Republicans have come out pretty strongly against the IRA as a whole. I think it’s a product of entirely partisan politics, and that’s often what happens when we have only partisan lawmaking.
However, I think I still heard the same themes that I’ve heard from Republicans for the last year, which is that there are parts of the IRA that still appeal to various factions of the Republican Party, and the future of the IRA is going to be made up on whether or not those different factions decide to weigh in on those different provisions. Take one of the interviews we did at the RNC with Mariannette Miller-Meeks. She talked a lot about the need to emphasize biofuels, and sustainable aviation fuels, and some of the other pieces of the IRA. She may care about that biofuels element because it’s representing her state of Iowa. She’s not going to care as much about the EV tax credit, because that’s not something that’s as important to her constituents. But that might not be the case for, say, a member from Georgia who’s representing an EV factory. I think any approach we take to the IRA is going to have to be, how do we look at these different regional constituencies, and how do they come together to build us a whole picture on what a tax package looks like?
I’d also say again, back to JD Vance and his comments at the convention. A lot of the things he said that talked about bolstering American manufacturing line up pretty well with the tax credits we see on the manufacturing side in the IRA. 45X, for example. I think that’s something that could really appeal to that populist wing of the party, but it’s a certain part of the Republican Party. And we have to, for clean energy advocates who are interested in saving the IRA, the advice I would give them is, you’ve got to be able to tailor your message to the group you’re meeting, and you shouldn’t expect every Republican to support something that was written by every Democrat.
Julia Pyper: You mentioned a tax package. And just for folks’ awareness, a lot of the Trump tax cut provisions do expire at the end of 2025, so we know for sure there’s going to be a tax bill next year no matter what, where a lot of these provisions, including clean energy tax credits will come up for negotiation. It’s going to be a lot of horse trading. What do we keep versus what do we need to cut, even among Democrats may be considering, what might we have to cut to say, preserve a child tax credit or other types of tax incentives?
So it’s going to be a real negotiation, to your point, and everyone’s going to come out with their starting points, and we as a clean energy community will have to make our case for why this is economic policy in America, and show the local benefits of the IRA. But really what the industry is doing with steady policy, I think is really where it’ll come down. To that end, you talked about different factions, Emily. The folks you spoke to at the RNC who are engaging on climate and clean energy issues, is this climate and clean energy group powerful enough to have things move toward decarbonization and have their voices really heard?
Emily Domenech: I mean, again, I think it depends on your perspective on what your end goal looks like. If your end goal is to reduce global emissions, I absolutely think that this group has the sway to move policy in that right direction. We’re looking at a conservative climate caucus that has almost 100 members of Congress. That is a huge constituency in a House that currently has a three vote margin.
What I would say though is that I don’t think that… If you’re coming at this from the perspective of folks who thought the IRA was the best bill ever passed in the history of America, you’re not going to see 100 Republicans echo that sentiment. Because we have a different perspective on how to approach climate policy, and how to approach reducing global emissions. It’s a little bit heavier on innovation, it’s a little bit heavier on regulatory reform, and it’s a little bit heavier on frankly looking at the global picture and ensuring that we’re not just offshoring our emissions to China or the developing world.
And I think that’s where we often have this divide on climate policy. It doesn’t mean we don’t have members who care about climate on both sides of the aisle. We have differences of opinions on the best way to solve this problem. And that’s something that I think it’s part of why we took Political Climate to the RNC, is we wanted to highlight the fact that just because they don’t agree with you, necessarily on the solution, doesn’t mean you don’t care about the problem, and you’re not engaged in trying to solve it.
Julia Pyper: All right, we’ll leave it there. That was our first dispatch from the RNC. We’ll be back this Friday with a second half of our reporting, and we’ll talk more in our next episode about some of the pressing issues our guests highlighted. Things like permitting reform, can’t miss that, and the appeal of nuclear energy, and how the GOP could handle the Inflation Reduction Act in a Republican administration. Always more to come on that.
Political Climate is a co-production of Latitude Media and Boundary Stone Partners. Max Savage Levenson is our producer, Sean Marquand is our technical director, and Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. You can get all of our show notes and transcripts at latitudemedia.com. And if you want us to talk about a specific topic, please email us at [email protected]. Please feel free to help spread the word about political climate on LinkedIn, X, and beyond. I’m Julia Pyper, see you again in just a few days on Friday.
