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A conversation with Colorado's junior senator on the 2024 election, permitting reform, and what might happen with the IRA.
This week we’re talking to Senator John Hickenlooper of Colorado who joined me yesterday at Heatmap’s Election Post-Game event in Washington, D.C., for a spirited chat about the 2024 election, permitting, and support for renewable energy in a Trump 2.0 era. We also talked about beer and The Fray, but we’ll spare you those details. The following is an abridged version of our conversation.
So you’ve said in your time in the Senate there needs to be a “business plan” for climate change. What’s the business plan now that Trump is going to be president again?
I said from the moment I got to Washington that I could not understand how we got so far down the road without any kind of plan. No one has mapped it out – and at this point it has to change – but there’s no sense of a plan.
Right now we have to look at the possibility of dramatic rollbacks from a lot of legislation that got passed in 2023. The Inflation Reduction Act, the largest financial commitment to addressing climate change in the history of the world. I think the CHIPS and Science Act has a lot of stuff in it that over time is going to have dramatic benefits in terms of addressing climate. Rolling back those efforts for the simple purpose of giving another tax break to the publicly traded stocks of America doesn’t seem constructive.
One thing that’ll make that difficult is many of the people who worked so hard to elect Donald Trump are receiving those benefits and those jobs. A lot of those tax credits are being spent in red states.
Faced with that rollback, which I think is really an interruption and which slows down the momentum – you want to disrupt the business plan, you want to throw a wrench in the gears, one way to do that is to create unpredictability. That anything agreed to [isn’t] going to stay the same for more than two years.
I’ve heard the argument a lot before, the past few years, that a lot of the money being spent is going to red states. Why was that not an election winning argument in these states?
My impression is people basically felt that the elites – Democrats and Republican elites – are looking down on them. They’re being judged by a woke culture. They’re being bossed around. Well over 2/3rds of the people who start business aren’t doing it to make a lot of money. They’re doing it because they can’t stand having a boss. They’re doing it because they want to be in control of their lives, their job, their work, their hours, their mission. And we Democrats did a piss poor disappointing job of communicating that way.
There’s a whole bunch of reasons why this happened like it did. Hearing the war stories the past couple of days, the kinds of ads that were used as a way of taking down Democrats were pretty outrageous.
What’s to come with permitting reform?
I think we’re seeing an alignment of self interest around permitting reform. Most of the large environmental organizations recognize that if we’re going to successfully address climate change, we’ve got to get transmission lines – you can’t spend 20 years permitting transmission lines. We’ve got to go faster. The time, sense of urgency we have, is not really sufficient. The same thing is true about critical minerals. We’re going to need so much of them and we haven’t really identified where they’re going to come from.
The bill that’s sitting there right now, I think we can get that passed. I’m not saying we’re going to. But I’m saying we have a very good chance of Republicans and Democrats lining up and saying, alright I don’t like a lot of this, but we need it.
So you think the first place people are going to go is the Manchin-Barrasso bill?
Yeah I think in the short-term I think that’s where they’re going to give their best shot.
Both sides have certain parts of that bill they are really unhappy with, and they modified certain parts of it, so [we’ll] come back from recess and everyone’ll [be] taking a fresh look at it and say well I still don’t like this but it’s not as bad as it was before.
There’s some worry in some corners of climate advocacy spaces that they’ll have less of an ear from members of Congress in light of the election results. In listening to more progressive environmentalists who’ve been critical of the bill, is listening to them a politically smart idea? Practically smart idea?
I don’t think it’s a smart idea politically or practically because I do feel this sense of urgency that we’ve got to go now.
With the Barrasso-Manchin bill, we’re still going to have to do all this work. We’re just going to do it in six months or a year or two years down the road and it takes us further and further away from dealing with the issue. The costs are asymptotic.
What climate gains will be made this Congress aside from permitting reform?
I think this great transition’s going to continue. It might slow down a little bit.
There is genuine factual basis that this transition makes sense on so many levels. Politically, it’s not something you want to talk about. But we as a country have to move in that direction. Maybe talk a little less, do a little more? I heard that advice in the musical Hamilton – talk less, smile more. We have to do the opposite, do more and smile less.
What do you mean by the transition being something you don’t want to talk about?
As you’re describing the cost of waiting for people, they can get into the nits and gnats where they can go back to who they represent and say hey, there’s a problem. The same thing happens when we talk about it. Try to talk about the issues in the broadest, most fundamental ways, because that’s the hardest way for it to be attacked. Just having the broad statement is going to be more effective with a large group of people.
So I asked if progress will be made on climate in Congress besides permitting and you didn’t say yes…
No, I’ll say yes. The great thing about the Inflation Reduction Act is that it put a lot of things in play. Carbon capture, there’s a bunch of research projects and a couple of implementations in red states where they are making great progress in terms of how they can get carbon out of the air in an increasingly cost-effective way. I haven’t seen it make any kind of economic sense, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t going to get there. Hydrogen is a huge thing. Looking at some of the new nuclear reactors, where they’re looking at types of fusion reactors, small and large. Climate change is not going to allow us to go and pick out our favorite treats.
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Today’s conversation is with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications, a D.C.-based communications firm that focuses on defending zero- and low-carbon energy and federal investments in climate action. Moyer, a veteran communications adviser who previously worked on Capitol Hill, has some hot takes as of late about how he believes industry and political leaders have in his view failed to properly rebut attacks on solar and wind energy, in addition to the Inflation Reduction Act. On Tuesday he sent an email blast out to his listserv – which I am on – that boldly declared: “The Wind Industry’s Strategy is Failing.”
Of course after getting that email, it shouldn’t surprise readers of The Fight to hear I had to understand what he meant by that, and share it with all of you. So here goes. The following conversation has been abridged and lightly edited for clarity.
What are you referencing when you say, ‘the wind industry’s strategy is failing’?
Anyone in the climate space, in the clean energy space, the worst thing you can do is go silent and pretend that this is just going to go away. Even if it’s the president and the administration delivering the attacks, I think there’s an important strategy that’s been lacking in the wind and other sectors that I don’t think has been effective. There was a recent E&E News story that noted a couple of wind developers when asked for comment just say, “No comment.” This to me misses a really big opportunity to not get in a fight with people but talk about the benefits of wind.
Not taking advantage of milestones like ground breaking or construction starting is a missed opportunity to drive public opinion. If you lose support in public opinion, you’re going to lose support from public officials, because they largely follow public opinion.
And there’s no way that’s going to change if you don’t take the opportunities to talk about the benefits that wind can provide, in terms of good-paying local jobs or supplying more electrons to the grid. By almost any measure the strategy employed so far has not really worked.
Okay, but what is the wind industry strategy that isn’t working? What are they doing to rebut attacks on the technology, on property values, on the environment?
We’re not hearing them. We’re not hearing those arguments.
You can’t let criticisms go unanswered.It would better serve the industry and these companies to push back against criticisms. It’s not like you can’t anticipate what they are. And what do you have to lose? You’re in the worst position of any energy sector in this political moment. It would be nice to see some fight and sharp campaign skills and strategic effort in terms of communication. And there’s no strategic value from what I can tell in [being silent].
I understand not wanting to pick a fight with folks who hold your fate in their hands, but there’s a way to thread a needle that isn’t antagonizing anybody but also making sure the facts have been heard. And that’s been missing.
You’d specifically said the industry should stop ‘being paralyzed in fear and start going on offense.’ What does that look like to you?
Taking every opportunity to get your message out there. The lowest hanging fruit is when a reporter comes and asks you, What do you think about this criticism? You should definitely reply. It’s lifting up third-party voices that are benefiting from a specific project, talking about the economic impacts more broadly, talking about the benefits to the grid.
There’s a whole number of tools in the toolbox to put to use but the toolboxes remain shut thus far. Targeted paid media, elevating the different voices and communities that are going to resonate with different legislators, and certainly the facts are helpful. Also having materials prepared, like validators and frequently asked questions and answers.
You’re trying to win. You’re trying to get your project to be successful and deliver jobs and tax revenue. And I think it would be wise for companies to look at the playbooks of electoral campaigns, because there’s lots of tools that campaigns use.
How do renewable energy developers get around the problem of partisanship? How do you get outta that through a campaign approach?
These projects are decided locally. It’s deciding who the decision-makers are and not just letting opponents who are getting talking points through right-wing media show up and reiterate these talking points. Oftentimes, there’s no one on the pro side even showing up at all, and it makes it really easy for city councils to oppose projects. They’re losing by forfeit. We can’t keep doing that.
And more on this week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Chautauqua, New York – More rural New York towns are banning renewable energy.
2. Virginia Beach, Virginia – Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project will learn its fate under the Trump administration by this fall, after a federal judge ruled that the Justice Department must come to a decision on how it’ll handle a court challenge against its permits by September.
3. Bedford County, Pennsylvania – Arena Renewables is trying to thread a needle through development in one of the riskiest Pennsylvania counties for development, with an agriculture-fueled opposition risk score of 89.
4. Knox County, Ohio – The Ohio Power Siting Board has given the green light to Open Road Renewables’ much-watched Frasier Solar project.
5. Clay County, Missouri – We’ll find out next week if rural Missouri can still take it easy on a large solar project.
6. Clark County, Nevada – President Trump’s Bureau of Land Management has pushed back the permitting process for EDF Renewables’ Bonanza solar project by at least two months and possibly longer .
7. Klickitat County, Washington – Washington State has now formally overridden local opposition to Cypress Creek’s Carriger solar project after teeing up the decision in May.
It’s governor versus secretary of state, with the fate of the local clean energy industry hanging in the balance.
I’m seeing signs that the fight over a hydrogen project in Wyoming is fracturing the state’s Republican political leadership over wind energy, threatening to trigger a war over the future of the sector in a historically friendly state for development.
At issue is the Pronghorn Clean Energy hydrogen project, proposed in the small town of Glenrock in rural Converse County, which would receive power from one wind farm nearby and another in neighboring Niobrara County. If completed, Pronghorn is expected to produce “green” hydrogen that would be transported to airports for commercial use in jet fuel. It is backed by a consortium of U.S. and international companies including Acconia and Nordex.
One can guess why investors thought this rural Wyoming expanse would be an easier place to build: it’s an energy community situated in the middle of the Powder River Basin and the state’s Republican governor Mark Gordon has supported wind projects in the state publicly, not just with rhetoric but votes in favor of them on the State Board of Land Commissioners.
Wind is also often proposed on private land in Wyoming, which is supposed to make things easier. You may remember the Lucky Star and Twin Rivers wind farms, a pair of projects whose progress I’ve watched like a hawk because they’re tied to the future of wind permitting at the national level. As we first reported, the Trump administration is proceeding with potentially approving the transmission line for Lucky Star, a project that would be sited entirely on private land, and Twin Rivers received its final environmental review in the last days of the Biden administration, making it difficult for anti-wind advocates to curtail.
Unlike those projects, Pronghorn has created a fork in the road for wind in Wyoming. It’s because the people in its host community don’t seem to want it, the wind projects were on state land, and there’s politics at play.
Despite being considered an energy community, Converse and Niobrara are both areas with especially high opposition risk, according to Heatmap Pro, largely due to its low support for renewable energy, its demographics, and concerns about impacts to the local ranching economy. After Gordon and other members of the state land use board approved two wind facilities for the hydrogen project, a rancher living nearby sued the board with public support from the mayor of Glenrock and the area’s legislators in the statehouse. A member of the Converse County zoning board even published a “manifesto” against the project, detailing local concerns that are myriad and rooted in fears of overburden, ranging from water use and property value woes to a general resentment toward an overall rise in wind turbines across the county and state.
What’s probably most concerning to wind supporters is that this local fight is bubbling up into a statewide political fracture between Gordon and his secretary of state Chuck Gray, who is believed to be a future candidate for governor. Grey was the lone dissenting vote against the two wind projects for Pronghorn, saying he did not support the projects because they would be assisted by federal tax credits Trump is trying to gut. Gray then took to mocking the governor on social media for his stance on wind while posting photos of broken wind turbines. Gordon wound up responding to his secretary of state accusing him of being the “only member of the state land board to vote against individual property rights and Wyoming schools.”
“That is his prerogative to be sure, but it demonstrates his disregard for the duties of his office and a determination to impose his personal preferences on others, no matter the cost,” Gordon stated.
I’ve been reaching out to Pronghorn and its founder Paul Martin to try and chat about what’s happening in Wyoming. I haven’t heard back, and if I do I’ll gladly follow this story up, but there’s a sign here of an issue in Wyoming whether Pronghorn gets built or not – areas of Wyoming may be on the verge of a breaking point on wind energy.
I heard about the Pronghorn project in conversations this week with folks who work on wind permitting issues in Wyoming and learned that the Gordon-Gray feud is emblematic of how the wind industry’s growth in the state is making local officials more wary of greenlighting projects. Whether Gordon’s position on private property wins out over Gray taking up the mantle of the anti-wind conservative critic may be the touchstone for the future of local planning decisions, too.
At least, that’s the sense I got talking to Sue Jones, a commissioner in Carbon County, directly southwest of Converse County. Jones admits she personally doesn’t care for wind farms and that it’s “no secret with the county, or the developers.” But so far, she hasn’t voted that way as a commissioner.
“If they meet all our rules and regs, then I’ve voted to give them a permit,” she told me. “You can’t just say no to anything. It’s a good thing that we value private property rights.”
Jones said the problem in Carbon County and other areas of Wyoming is “saturation level.” Areas of the state where only a handful of landowners hold thousands of acres? That’s probably fine for wind projects because there’s a low likelihood of a neighbor or two having a genuine grievance. But as wind has grown into population-denser areas of the state the dissent is becoming more frequent.
My gut feeling is that, as we’ve seen in many other instances, this resentment will bubble up and manifest as sweeping reform – unless the wind industry is able to properly address these growing concerns head on.