In today’s episode — the second of a two-part dispatch — Political Climate co-host Emily Domenech takes us behind the curtain at the 2024 Republican National Convention to chat with the lawmakers championing clean energy from within the GOP.
We’ll hear from members of Congress like Rep. John Curtis of Utah and Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota, as well as advocates like Jason Grumet of the American Clean Power Association and Heather Reams of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions.
In this second installment, Emily and her guests discuss the urgency of permitting reform, and consider the fate of the IRA in a Republican administration. They also dig into the state of nuclear energy, and offer some climate policy advice for former President Trump’s campaign.
At the end of the episode, all three Political Climate hosts gather to discuss and debate the policies that surfaced during Emily’s reporting trip, as well as Vice President Harris’ record on climate policy.
Credits: Hosted by Julia Pyper, Emily Domenech, and Brandon Hurlbut. Produced by Max Savage Levenson. Edited by Anne Bailey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor.
This episode of Political Climate was made possible by ClearPath Action, a conservative energy advocacy organization focused on reducing global emissions.
Transcript
Emily Domenech: No need to name any names, but I’m curious if you can share a conversation you’ve had with a colleague who is perhaps still skeptical of climate change. How did that go? How’d you try to reach them, and are those the kinds of conversations you think are important for us to have with Republicans?
Rep. John Curtis: So in my role as the chair and founder of a Conservative Climate Caucus, I have those almost daily. What I think is important to realize is people are on a continuum, right? So I’m quite comfortable talking about it. Others want to start talking about it. They’re in a different place on the continuum. We have people who literally come to all my conservative climate meetings but won’t join the caucus because they know back home that will get them in trouble. But they want to know more. And so, I think part of the secret is taking people right where they are, no matter how uncomfortable they are, and realize that’s okay. And my experience is as they get more comfortable talking about it, as they realize there are conservative ideas that don’t destroy the economy, that don’t make us energy dependent, they get more and more comfortable with it, and that’s kind of the purpose of the Caucus.
Julia Pyper: Welcome back to Political Climate. I’m Julia Pyper. Earlier this week our own co-host, Emily Domenech, took us behind the scenes of the 2024 Republican National Convention to talk climate policy and priorities of leading lawmakers and advocates. And now, we’re back to share the second half of her report.
In today’s episode, you’ll hear from members of Congress like Representatives John Curtis of Utah, and Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota. That was Representative Curtis you heard at the top of the show. You’ll also get insights from advocates like Jason Grumet of the American Clean Power Association and industry champions like Jim Murphy, the president of Invenergy. Listen along as Emily digs into the climate priorities and pressing questions facing a potential second Trump administration, from her favorite topic, permitting reform to nuclear power, and the future of the Inflation Reduction Act. She also asks our guests what advice they have for the Trump-Vance ticket when it comes to climate and energy policy.
Thanks again to ClearPath Action, a conservative energy advocacy organization focused on reducing global emissions, who made this episode possible.
As per usual, I’m joined by my two delightful co-hosts, Brandon Hurlbut and Emily Domenech. Brandon served as chief of staff in President Obama’s energy department and went on to found Boundary Stone Partners and Overture VC. Emily served as senior advisor to Speakers of the House, Kevin McCarthy and Mike Johnson, and is now a senior Vice President at Boundary Stone.
Hey, guys. How are you doing? Brandon, glad to have you back on the show.
Brandon Hurlbut: A lot’s changed since the last time I was here.
Julia Pyper: I know. You just dropped a couple bombs like, “I don’t think we’re going to have the same guy at the top of the Democratic ticket,” and then you peaced out for a few weeks.
Emily Domenech: I was going to say. Brandon took a vacation, and now we have a whole new candidate.
Brandon Hurlbut: That’s right. Thankfully.
Julia Pyper: Maybe he was working behind the scenes. Did you get the 30-second heads up, Brandon, that there was a change?
Brandon Hurlbut: No, I did not get the 30-second heads up, but I think the Los Angeles event that I was at was an impetus for some of this. It sparked the George Clooney op-ed in the New York Times. That was just part of that echo chamber, I think, that caused the president to reconsider.
Julia Pyper: Let me just ask you, 30 seconds, what’s your temperature right now? How are you feeling as a lifelong, committed Democrat about this change? I mean, it’s monumental. It’s historic in many ways.
Brandon Hurlbut: The energy is incredible. You can almost feel the ground moving beneath you. It kind of feels like that ’08 kind of energy where people are signing up to volunteer. There’s a surge in voter registration. It’s all young people. The money is flowing in, a couple hundred million dollars from first time donors, small checks. It’s really a big change and very exciting.
Julia Pyper: A massive tectonic shift on the democratic side. But of course, we’re here to talk about the RNC and Emily’s conversations she was able to have with leaders on that side of the aisle who are putting climate and clean energy on the agenda in their own way.
So Brandon, you and I will be back at the end of the episode to chat briefly with Emily about her reporting. For now, here is part two of Political Climate’s dispatch from the 2024 Republican National Convention.
Emily Domenech: A few weeks ago, I headed to Milwaukee to witness something new at a Republican convention. Leaders gathered for an event to champion clean energy. Called the Conservative Climate Reception, the gathering 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 giant glass orbs containing different ecosystems.
At the event, my producer Max and I 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. If you’ve listened to Political Climate before, you may know that I’m kind of obsessed with permitting reform, and I wanted to get these leaders’ opinions on what I think is one of the most pressing and impactful issues facing the future of American energy.
First, a bit of context. Last year, as part of the Debt Limit Deal, congressional Republicans worked with the Biden administration to reform NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act. Those revisions were intended to make it easier to permit and build infrastructure in America, roads and bridges, clean energy, pipelines, and other fossil fuel projects. But then, this April, the Biden administration issued a rulemaking to implement those NEPA reforms.
Critics argue that the revised plan actually complicates the permitting process by adding extra layers of environmental review. Keep in mind that the RNC took place just before Senators Manchin and Barrasso announced their own permitting reform bill on July 22nd, so it didn’t come up in these conversations.
Here’s Kelly Armstrong, North Dakota’s lone representative, talking about the importance of permitting reform. Armstrong is also running for governor of his state this November.
Rep. Kelly Armstrong: I spent a very long weekend with you in the Speaker’s office as we were trying to close down finishing on the debt ceiling legislation and permitting reform became a part of it. And I mean, it’s obviously, in theory, a bipartisan issue. Everybody understands. It doesn’t matter what kind of electron you’re trying to get somewhere, a green electron, a gray electron, a black electron. We don’t put infrastructure in the ground in the same way we used to.
And so, probably in the energy space, I would say that’s going to be real reform that’s really going to help. I mean, green energy projects need it every bit as much as a pipeline. If you can’t get this stuff plugged into the grid, you can’t get it built. And we’ve seen it, even since the Inflation Reduction Act, which, the name we could talk about a little bit, but I mean, you’re starting to see some of those tax credits not really exist. Because you can do a solar farm in New Mexico, but if you can’t plug it in, it’s really hard to figure out how you can raise the capital for that.
Emily Domenech: Jim Murphy is the president of Invenergy, a multinational power generation company. He expressed frustration over the politicization of renewables and explained why he thinks the status quo on permitting has hampered the growth of new projects.
You all obviously are building in every part of the energy supply chain. What do you see as the biggest hurdle to building that capacity here in America?
Jim Murphy: Well, it is hard to say one single thing. I mean, there are a number of challenges. Probably the biggest challenge, if you would ask our development team, is the permitting, especially with our renewable project development. Renewable energy has become a dividing issue. It has become politicized to the point where renewable bad, fossil good, depending upon which side of the aisle you’re on. We want to change that, clearly, but we can’t do it if we have counties and municipalities having moratoriums or other restrictions on permitting. And we can’t have it if we’re going to go through endless cycles of getting our permits and then having to go through the court system to defend our permits. It’s slowing things down. It’s making it difficult, and we’re seeing it everywhere we’re operating.
There have been some bright areas here that we’re seeing in some of the states where they’re moving to more state-run permitting processes, like right here in Wisconsin. We have that. We’ve seen it in Michigan. We’ve seen in other states, and we hope to see more of that because we think that it can become a more consistent, rational process than going with each individual county or other, smaller jurisdiction.
Emily Domenech: We also spoke to representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa, who recently replaced Curtis as the chair of the Conservative Climate Caucus as he runs for Senate. She argued that in the absence of reform, litigation can slow down construction and permitting even further.
Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks: So agnostic of energy source, permitting reform is critically important, and it doesn’t matter what your preferred energy source is. We need permitting reform. As a matter of fact, we need permitting reform to progress to anything. It doesn’t matter if it’s a wind turbine, if it’s a solar panel, if it’s a gas and oil field, if it’s an ethanol plant. It doesn’t matter. You want to build something in the United States, you want to put in a roadway, you need permitting reform.
All right. As you know, permitting for things that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle and environmentalists want can take 10 to 12 years. And even once you get past the NEPA permitting, the environmental process through our agencies, then there is the threat of continuing, unending litigation. So you can sue. You can be dismissed in a court, and then, they bring up another lawsuit. And it’s unending.
So we need liability reform. We need permitting reform. What about permitting reform that has fast track if there’s co-location? So co-location of a transmission line and a pipeline, that’s something that could be done. What about stranded assets? So we have a nuclear power plant in Iowa. There’s already transmission there. Or coal-fired plants that are out of use now, and they’re stranded. Can those be repurposed to a different energy generation, and then those transmission lines, and can that be fast-track permitted? And there’s no reason. It already met all the environmental standards.
So I think for both parties, this is a big issue. I think because of the way the Biden administration has handled it, that there’s a lack of trust now.
Emily Domenech: Heather Reams, the President of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, anticipates that Congress won’t lock in permitting reform until next session. She also framed the issue in terms of the return for taxpayers.
What is CRES doing on permitting reform, and are we going to actually change the narrative here?
Heather Reams: Permitting reform, permitting reform, permitting reform is what it feels like. It’s what it feels like right now, and not getting anything done. A little frustrating … Actually, a lot of frustrating to see that. And with the IRA passage, there was the promise of permitting reform, and we know there’s investments that are going in and we need to build. And if it takes longer to build, it costs more to build. That means no ROI for the taxpayers or less ROI for taxpayers. This needs to get done.
And I don’t know with this political climate, with lame duck, if we’re looking at something, we want something more comprehensive, thinking about a new administration, a new Congress, I’m not really confident we’re going to see something this Congress. I really think this is a 2025 issue, but it’s got to be a 2025 issue. It can’t go beyond.
Emily Domenech: What do you say to folks in the renewable community who say, “Oh, permitting reform is just a backdoor way to help oil and gas?”
Heather Reams: Sometimes you’re going to have to … We see this with transmission lines and pipes as well. You’re going to have to take the good with the bad. I think this is a compromise. I don’t hear it as much from the renewable energy communities. I hear it more from the NGOs, the left of center organizations. I think the renewable energy companies are like, “Let us compete. Just let us compete. We’re fine.” I think it’s more of the NGOs that are doing a disservice to the renewable energy companies and that’s getting conflated.
But my friends at the Solar Association, for instance, they’re going, “Hey, just let it … Fine. Let’s build. And if it happens that there’s a pipeline or something for oil and gas, so be it because we want to compete.”
Emily Domenech: Many of the leaders we interviewed advocated for more nuclear power in the United States. As we’ve discussed before on Political Climate, nuclear has recently seen a huge resurgence of support among lawmakers and the public. For instance, earlier this year, the House and Senate passed the ADVANCE Act on nearly unanimous votes in both chambers, and President Biden signed it into law in July. The ADVANCE Act will help streamline the permitting process for new, advanced reactors, cut regulatory fees, and enable international investment.
Here’s Jeremy Harrell, the CEO of ClearPath and ClearPath Action.
Jeremy Harrell: Over ClearPath’s 10 years of existence, nuclear has been a central pillar of ours. One, we think that it’s a sweet spot where it provides baseload zero emission electricity. It’s important towards our geopolitical strength, and in the end, we’ve found immense success in building bipartisan support in Congress.
Emily Domenech: We also spoke to Luke Bolar, the Chief External Affairs Officer for ClearPath and ClearPath Action. Bolar also leads the ClearPath Action Fund, a political action committee.
Luke Bolar: I was doing some work with the Department of Energy during Trump’s first administration, and Department of Energy Secretary, Rick Perry, came in and was talking to the nuclear team. And he said, “We just need to make nuclear cool again. It’s a great technology. It obviously makes so much sense, but there wasn’t a lot of people talking about the benefits.” And so, I think that also shifted maybe 10 years ago, and it’s a cool technology. And I think a lot of people, and especially a lot of young people, see that and are reengaging and wanting to get into the industry because a really exciting industry.
Emily Domenech: Heather Reams of CRES highlighted her recent visit to the Vogtle Nuclear Plant in Georgia where units three and four came online in the past year. But she also told us that nuclear should make a pivot to smaller, more flexible designs.
Heather Reams: We need that baseload energy. It’s clean, and it’s affordable. And wow, it can just power a lot of communities around. I mean, businesses are flocking to Georgia because of the clean, reliable, and affordable power that’s there because of that nuclear facility. So I mean, other places are going to want this. Other states should want it, but that build, I think it’s just too much. We can’t wait that long. We can’t have these kind of costs. It’s not scalable. So something’s got to change.
So I see more small modular nuclear, as being part of the solution in the future. I think it can help with rural parts of their country, certainly can help in Alaska, can help in places where we’ve had devastation, in bringing power back online, which will save lives. So there’s a lot of reasons to like nuclear in a different way. I think it’s more practical for the future.
Emily Domenech: Representative Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma highlighted her support for smaller reactors as well.
Rep. Stephanie Bice: I am a big fan of looking at the small modular reactors, SMRs. There’s a lot of new technology there. I was just overseas a couple of weeks ago, and the Europeans are not afraid to look at installing new nuclear. And that’s something that I think the US should embrace because there’s new technology to prevent bad things from happening. There’s monitoring systems, but there’s also the ability for us to power homes and not have situations like Winter Storm Uri that happened in Texas a couple of years ago where a lot of failures happened on a lot of different fronts and people were without power for quite some time.
Emily Domenech: I was also curious to hear from Republicans how they would tackle the Inflation Reduction Act if they win the White House in November. The bill passed in 2022 without a single Republican vote, but that doesn’t mean that all Republicans are opposed to every component of the sprawling bill. Here’s Representative Curtis.
Let’s talk IRA a little bit. You’ve had, I think, a pretty balanced take on the IRA. You obviously voted against it, but I think you don’t come out and just say, “Let’s throw the whole thing in the trash can.” Have you tried to talk to some of your colleagues on the right about whether there are parts of the IRA that are worth keeping? And if so, what are those things?
Rep. John Curtis: Yeah. I’ve had a lot of those conversations because I think if not careful, the way it went through reconciliation, the way it spent $1.5 trillion, the way that no Republicans were involved, your tendency is to say, “Throw the whole thing out.” But I like to point to nuclear, carbon sequestration, direct air capture. A lot of Republican priorities were there, and I think, had they come in standalone bills, very likely they would’ve been supported by Republicans. And those are the ones that kind of jump out at me that are easy for Republicans to relate to that are part of our energy policy as well.
Emily Domenech: Representative Bice championed transportation infrastructure investments and emphasized that she would only support renewables if they were manufactured here in the United States.
Is there any part of the IRA that you think you could support, and what’s on the other side? What’s a piece you’d like to see axed next Congress?
Rep. Stephanie Bice: Well, look, I think certainly transportation infrastructure in there was important, and for my district being the crossroads of America, there’s a lot of things in there that I think would make sense. But also, we have to look at: in there, there was a lot of grant programming that the Department of Energy was given the authority to dole out tens of billions of dollars of grants. And the Inspector General actually came to me and said, “I don’t have enough resources nor enough funding from the Department of Energy to actually oversee and make sure these grants are being given out in a responsible, thoughtful way.”
Meaning is there any duplication of grants being awarded we didn’t know about? Are they meeting certain guidelines and parameters that we think are important from a taxpayer perspective? I want to make sure that we’re spending our taxpayer dollars wisely. And so I’d like to see more oversight of a lot of those dollars to be able to make sure that we’re doing it justice.
I also think that we have to be really careful about some of the things like promoting solar right now because as you probably know, a lot of the components that are in solar panels are rare earth minerals that are being manufactured overseas, mainly in China. We don’t want to become reliant on our adversaries, and that’s exactly what’s happening with a lot of these pushes for green energy. Again, not opposed to them, but don’t make it a primary focus because then we’re becoming more reliant on a country that we don’t have good relations with. And it can become problematic long term.
Emily Domenech: Do you think maybe there’s value in some of those tax credits that are designed to sort of re-shore that efforts, like the manufacturing tax credit or the mining pieces, things like that?
Rep. Stephanie Bice: Absolutely. Yeah, and I think that’s a great point. So those tax credits are important. We have to be mindful of that, though, because you don’t want people to become reliant on those credits. And then, depending on the federal government to actually move that technology forward is a challenge, which is why we’re always very leery about starting it because once you start it, you can’t stop.
Emily Domenech: Chris Barnard, the president of the American Conservation Coalition, made a helpful distinction between supporting nascent industries and more mature ones.
Chris Barnard: I think part of the problem is around the sunsetting of tax credits that would kind of extend ad infinitum and be extremely expensive for mature technologies. That’s obviously something where we don’t support those kinds of subsidies, but we do support helping nascent American-made technologies that we need to be dominating the world on from being able to happen here in the U.S. And so for those kinds of things, I think there’s a bipartisan conversation to be had, but the way the IRA was done explicitly shut out that bipartisan opportunity and, as a result, made all of these things really toxic. And I think we need to kind of go back a few steps to figure out what exactly we can agree on versus not.
Emily Domenech: Heather Reams pointed out that the impacts of the IRA are often felt locally. She encouraged Republicans to consider this reality if they have the opportunity to axe the entire bill.
When you talk to Republicans who are under so much pressure to say, “We’re repealing the IRA, that’s what we’re doing.” How do you help folks message and bridge the gap on this?
Heather Reams: I think Republicans are going to, particularly the House Republicans are going to get in a little bit of a jam in thinking about all the investments that are going into their districts because of the IRA, the jobs that are happening. And we’re thinking about rural America. It’s tremendous investment that’s happening.
So it isn’t like every IRA dollar going out is exactly the same, right? So all politics is local, all jobs are local. I think we’re going to have to get into this, I don’t want to say horse trading, but that back and forth. And that is really … But I think it’s healthy to do that.
Emily Domenech: We also asked our guests for their predictions, what they see coming down the metaphorical pipeline.
Jim Murphy of Invenergy offered a helpful take on transmission. He uses the acronym RTO. For anyone listening who may not be as much of an energy nerd as I am, it stands for Regional Transmission Organization.
Let’s pick on transmission, for example. What are those big hurdles for transmission, and how do we fix them, maybe in a more regional way?
Jim Murphy: Well, it’s been interesting because we’ve been trying to participate in the regional processes for transmission development, and what we find often is that we are not really welcome at the table because the RTOs and their members want to control that process. And they have reasons they want to control that process. I mean, they’re being counted on to provide reliable energy in their system and the transmission has to work and they have to make sure that they don’t have problems from a stability standpoint and a reliability standpoint.
But we think that we’re bringing to the table some very important enhancements to the transmission system, and we want to see those included in the regional planning and, in particular, in the inter-regional solutions because if we don’t have inter-regional transmission, then we’re just going to have a Balkanized grid, and we’re not going to be able to bring power from the places that it may exist from time to time where we have shortages in other places.
We saw this in spades with the recent winter storm in the Midwest where we had shortages that we know that if some of our transmission projects had been built at that time, those shortages just would not have existed.
Emily Domenech: Of course, it wasn’t just renewable energy producers who showed up at the RNC but fossil fuel companies as well. We caught up with Anne Bradbury, the CEO of the American Exploration and Production Council, who explained that the methane emissions in American natural gas have dropped substantially over the past few years. I also asked her about Jason Grumet’s comment, which we highlighted in our first RNC episode, that he sees natural gas in a “race” to compete with renewable energy in the US.
Anne Bradbury: So in the power sector, the majority of emissions reductions have been driven by natural gas. So renewables have played a role in emissions reductions, but the main driver has been natural gas displacing coal. And so that’s the story in the power sector, but if you look at the production sector itself and how we’re producing that energy, American energy producers continue to drive down the emissions profile of US-produced oil and natural gas. The methane emissions intensity of US-produced oil and gas has dropped by about 60% just over the last seven years.
Emily Domenech: So we talked to Jason Grumet from ACP yesterday, and he brought up a really interesting point about sort of an all-of-the-above competition here. And they’re not anti-natural gas, but I think there’s kind of a sentiment on the left that if you’re a fossil energy producer, you’re reflexively anti-renewables. What’s your take? And if we’re off base, why?
Anne Bradbury: We share Jason’s perspective that all sources of energy are going to be needed and that natural gas in particular is extremely complementary to the build out of renewables. It’s really interesting for me when I go out in the field. Sometimes I see a lot of our producer’s production facilities are actually powered by solar. We were in Wyoming recently, and there’s a lot of solar in Wyoming. There’s a lot of solar in Texas. And so you even see oil and gas producers utilizing some of those renewable technologies to power those operations. So we are pro all-of-the-above energy. We believe in continuing to find the right mix of energy sources to deliver affordable, reliable, and more sustainable energy.
Emily Domenech: Heather Reams predicts that the EV tax credit will go on the chopping block. She also hopes that Republicans will double down on nuclear and carbon capture.
What do you think are the winners and losers in that next big tax package?
Heather Reams: Well, I’ll start with the negatives, the losers. I have not talked to a single Republican legislator or staff member who feels that the EV tax credits are going to stay. It’s a consumer tax credit. It didn’t have a lot of support to begin with Republicans, and really, the ROI for taxpayers just isn’t there, if you have to pick and choose at the end of the day. So I don’t feel like that tax credit really is going to stand its ground.
On the renewable side, thinking about renewable energy, I think one that’s worth fighting for is the energy storage tax credits. It really is. Energy storage is, kind of like they say, the holy grail if you’re thinking about renewable energy that has intermittency. So I think that one’s worth fighting for, and we will be engaging on that significantly.
And I think other winners, so to speak, are those that are going to be a little less politically, on the energy side, back and forth. There’s been bipartisan support. Thinking about nuclear, thinking about carbon capture, that really have technologies that are really going to help our country grow economically, I would like to see a lot more in those areas and investment appropriations as well. So I think doubling down on some of those, not just protecting them, but doubling down is where we need to go.
Emily Domenech: Representative Miller-Meeks, the new Chair of the Conservative Climate Caucus dropped a not so subtle hint about who she’d like to see run the EPA in a second Trump administration.
Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks: I’ve already got my choice for EPA. I don’t know if I’ll get it, but I already have someone in mind that …
Emily Domenech: You going to tell us who it is?
Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks: … came to Iowa a lot. I would love Governor Burgum to be EPA.
Emily Domenech: Oh, interesting. I like that. That’s a good thought.
Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks: Number one, he knows the space. Number two, he’s been out in the private industry. He ran a business. He’s been an executive in a state, which I think is very different. So he’s familiar with government, familiar with those government lovers. He knows the energy industry inside and out, and I think he would be a friend to us in the Conservative Climate Caucus as well. He’s a thinker, which I really like about him, and then he executes.
So President Trump, if you’re listening to this podcast, I would like to put a name in the hat there.
Emily Domenech: We also asked ClearPath if they had any advice for Trump on the campaign trail.
Here’s Luke Bolar.
Luke Bolar: The greatest way to approach this that your base will love and swing voters will come around and also love is talking about American competitiveness, and that to solve the global climate challenge, because it is a global climate challenge, we need to bring manufacturing and energy production back to the United States. Obviously, something that Donald Trump and J. D. Vance are very, very keen on, bring manufacturing and energy production back to the United States because our environmental standards are stronger here.
Emily Domenech: Asked the same question, heather Reams encouraged Trump and Vance not to shy away from wind and solar.
Heather Reams: I would encourage them both to continue their all-the-above message, that we need all American homegrown energy, but it’s like to walk the walk to. Not just say it, but do it. And American homegrown energy means solar in the southeast. It means wind in the plains. It means hydroelectric in the northwest. It means offshore wind in the Northeast. It means nuclear across the country. It means oil and gas. It means everything. And to really walk that and recognize the value that these energy sources bring to communities across the country. And if they could do that, then I’m really happy.
Emily Domenech: Let’s wrap up with Jason Grumet of the American Clean Power Association. His perspective echoes Representative Armstrong’s comments at the beginning of the episode.
We’re obviously here at the RNC. So if you had the opportunity to talk to former President Trump or his advisors, what would your advice be going into a potential next administration?
Jason Grumet: So while I don’t anticipate having quality time with the former President over the next couple of days, we are speaking to a lot of people who are advising the campaign, will likely be part if there is a Trump administration, and we’re just basically saying, “Look, we’re here to celebrate the core conservative values of American energy dominance, of national security, of economic growth, of jobs across the country. These are benefits that are going to be felt by the leaders of both parties.”
And I think at the end of the day, the core premise of the recent success of clean energy has been around increased private sector investment. The benefits are flowing across the country. We think it is important that we not get stuck in the kind of caricatured woke versus … Electrons don’t have political parties. We basically need all sources of energy that match our national interests. And so, we’re just making sure that the political leaders in both parties appreciate that we think we are a core aspect of the economy. We’re one of the greatest and largest manufacturing sectors in the country. And just basically help folks see the future that it’s aligned with clean power and all other sources, too.
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Julia Pyper: All right. That’s it for our second dispatch from the RNC, but of course, there’s things we want to unpack and discuss from that coverage.
Emily and Brandon, a couple of questions for you before we wrap up. Brandon. First, I want to hear from you. Brandon, which of the policies discussed here felt the most likely to find bipartisan support?
Brandon Hurlbut: The good news is there seems to be some real consensus around some of the technologies like nuclear energy, carbon removal, things like direct air capture, and a great interest in permitting reform, which I know we’ll get to. So those seem like areas that we can work together and make some progress on.
I was really heartened hear support for energy storage because I hadn’t really heard that in the past, and that’s really critical. And so hearing that support really warmed my heart. On the downside, EVs seem to be the most at risk. No surprise there, but that’s crucial because the transportation sector is the most greenhouse gas emitting sector we have. We do need a lot of work there.
Emily Domenech: So on the EV issue in particular, I think folks always assume this is a anti-EV movement. What it really is an anti-China movement. I think there is the EV supply chain, like it or not, is the hardest to get China out of. We have Chinese minerals. We have Chinese mineral processing. We have Chinese batteries. We have a whole range of Chinese impact in that supply chain. And what we’re pushing is sort of the end result of that, which is like how do we get more EVs on the market? It’s really hard to go back and get China out of that supply chain, but I think it’s part of why we see that EV one get the biggest target because it’s, frankly, we are subsidizing that’s going to have something that has Chinese components.
I think, on the inverse, it’s why we hear less pushback about things that look at the manufacturing sector. So we’re trying to get China out of that supply chain. We’re trying to develop permitting reform proposals that help us do more critical mineral processing and mining here in America. Those things tend to get more bipartisan support where the things that seem to be really, really China-focused are a little harder.
The other thing I’ll say about the EV space is that I think when we talk about reducing emissions from the transportation sector, the American people, and I think Republicans in particular like options. They don’t like being told by somebody in Washington, “Your only option is to get a battery electric EV, and that’s your only choice. You don’t get to drive a hybrid. You don’t get to use a low-carbon fuel. You don’t get to continue to use biofuels if you’re in Iowa, and we’re going to tell you what’s best for you.” So I think looking at the transportation sector from a more of a, “How do we provide the lowest emissions options that work best in that region of the country,” might make us some headway in that space.
Julia Pyper: At the top of the episode, we heard from Representative Curtis who is actually running for Senate and has a great shot of winning that for Utah. We heard from him calling for meeting people where they are when it comes to climate and energy. He talks to a broad swath of people and made the case that we need to sort of, again, meet people where they’re at in their, call it, climate journey.
I’m curious how you in particular, Brandon, square that with the evidence we have that we’re in the middle of a climate crisis, and there’s urgency to act.
Brandon Hurlbut: It’s the biggest problem because this issue does have a shot clock. If Republicans were speaking like this 20, 25 years ago, it would be much different. We don’t have the luxury of that time.
I was recently re-watching the movie The Big Short. Do you remember that one? And I think a lot of people on the progressive side feel like Steve Carell or Christian Bale in that movie where you’re like, “This financial collapse, it was so clear. The numbers, all the bad paper that was out there, it was right in front of everyone’s face,” and everyone was sort of looking the other way. And the whole economy essentially collapsed because of it, but you had these people that were like, “Wait, how can you not see this? This is super clear.”
And we see it every day. I mean, India had 37 straight days or whatever recently above 104 degrees. This wildfire up in California, the park wildfire that burned 307,000 acres so quickly. 35 miles wide! I mean, we’re seeing these things right in front of our face. It is right now, and we don’t have the luxury of time.
Emily Domenech: I would just say, though, that when we tend to do this all or nothing approach in Congress and in Washington and in policy generally, we often get nothing. And so if you say, “Hey, if you’re not a hundred percent on board with where I am right now today … This is my most important issue,” you’re going to lose out on a bunch of people who rank this issue as number four or five on their list. And they care about being able to pay their bills, and they care about being able to get their groceries. And they care about the economy being strong. So if you immediately write off all those people, you’ve lost a bunch of your partners.
And I think that’s the point that Curtis is trying to make here, which is let’s find the things … To your point earlier, Brandon, about how these are the areas where we think we have compromise and agreement and we can work on those issues, let’s not let the fact that we don’t agree on a hundred percent of the policy solutions here stop us from working on the things we do agree on because if we want lasting policy in this space, it’s got to be bipartisan. Otherwise, you end up with this swinging pendulum of policymaking depending on who’s in the White House. And that doesn’t help the economy, and it doesn’t help policy in this space either.
The other thing I’ll say, too, is that I think regular Americans who, again, are concerned about these groceries and gas kind of issues, they have really negative reactions to people who say, “This is such a crisis that I’m going to block the highway,” or “Such a crisis that I’m going to throw paint on a priceless piece of art to try to get you to focus on this important issue.” They react so negatively that they often then care about the issue even less. So I think some of it is like, let’s figure out a way we can move the ball forward in the most effective way that brings the most people along with us to move policy for the long term.
Brandon Hurlbut: I mostly agree with that. The heart of progressivism is progress. And so these things like the permitting bill and NEPA reform, sometimes you have to compromise to make progress. I’m all for that, but we just are running out of time on this, Emily. And I think we need this action now.
Emily Domenech: Yeah, And I would just say, again, I think Curtis lined this up really well, and it’s part of why he’s such a good messenger on this issue is that right now what we’re debating is what are the best policies to keep the economy strong and deal with this issue? And that’s a really healthy debate for us to be having.
Brandon Hurlbut: It’s like a false choice that we want to do stuff that’s pro-clean energy, and it’s going to hurt people’s grocery bills and whatnot. Every study has shown the faster that we move to these technologies, the more people’s costs go down. These are cheaper technologies. EVs, solar, wind energy, we can save people money by moving faster to this. So it’s not this choice of like, “Well, if we do the good stuff, people’s prices are going to go up.”
Emily Domenech: Well, and I think we see that play out. Sometimes it works that way. Sometimes it’s California, and your electricity prices are the highest in the country. So that means there is a policy debate to be had about how we do this in the best way that doesn’t leave those low-income Americans behind. And I think that’s the debate we heard folks bring up that they want to have at this event. And that, to me, is progress.
Julia Pyper: Well, last, we could unpack on that front for sure.
Brandon, I’m curious, is there anything in these interviews that you heard from the RNC that tweaked your perspective at all, that caused you to think about something a little differently? Or anything that just surprised you?
Brandon Hurlbut: Not really. I think in one of the interviews it was called out that there is a little bit of the schism between the industry and some of the NGOs. And I think you’re going to see that. I do think the industry, they’re ready to compete. If we have to open up permitting, and that also includes permitting for oil and gas, I think the industry knows that they can compete with them. And they’re ready to have that competition. And the NGOs, I still think are characterizing this in a way that is behind the times a little bit.
But I do think that the clean energies will win out under that scenario. They’re not going to be building as many fossil fuel plants because these technologies are cheaper. But we have to be able to build them otherwise, yeah, it’s not going to happen. Right?
Emily Domenech: Yeah. And I also think it’s the thread that I always kind of bring into this, too, is we have to be talking about the global picture. If we’re only talking about US emissions, we are losing. And that means that we have to be thinking about, “Okay, what is the rest of the world doing and how do we move them in a pathway that actually reduces emissions?” And that’s about bringing down the cost curve on everything, right? To Brandon’s point, if everything is cheaper, China’s just going to do it. We’re not going to have to make them. They’re going to pick the cheapest, best option. So all of our policies have to be pushing in that direction.
Julia Pyper: All right, last question for you Brandon. We are a couple weeks out from the Democratic National Convention. A lot has changed on that ticket in recent days, weeks. What are you taking away from that as we head toward the DNC? Are you thinking that there’s things Democrats can pivot off of coming out of the RNC? What do you think we should be on the lookout for heading into that convention?
Brandon Hurlbut: Yeah, I think for our issue, it’ll be really interesting to see what Vice President Harris wants to do, if anything, that differentiates from the Biden policies. I mean, as the Vice President, you have to support what your boss wants to do. So it’ll be interesting to see what she does, who her people are, that she’s going to rely on, who she’s going to go to for advice on this issue.
And I think what’s really interesting about that is that despite the fact that she’s been the Vice President for four years, she’s not as well known in that area. I mean, people really identify with her. She’s been very outspoken on choice after the Supreme Court ruling, but where she is on energy and climate issues and who’s going to be advising her closely on those issues, I think, will be determined. And I’m excited to be a part of that.
Emily Domenech: Yeah, I’m looking forward to hearing, to Brandon’s point, about whether there is any differentiation between her and President Biden. I think the one issue that I’ve seen come up in the past is that she’s a little bit more plugged in with the sort of environmental justice communities, which I think it’s an interesting push and pull between the, “We need to build more, better, faster,” and “How do we make sure we do it in a way that includes the low-income communities that might be impacted by those projects?”
I’m really curious to see how that balance comes out, because I think we’re pretty solidly on the, “We got to build more, better, faster,” and how do we make those policies move forward if perhaps those are communities that are putting pressure on the new nominee.
Julia Pyper: Well, lots more to come from the DNC and the Democratic side of the aisle in weeks to come. For now, Emily, great job reporting from the RNC, putting on your reporter hat.
Emily Domenech: Thank you. We had a lot of fun.
Julia Pyper: I know it was a hustle, but that’s it for this episode.
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.
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I’m Julia Pyper. See you in two weeks.
