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Here’s what we know so far about the Senate, the House, and key local races.

American voters have chosen Donald Trump as their next president — again. The decision will have monumental consequences for the renewables transition, energy prices, and environmental issues. But it was not the only race of this election cycle.
Heatmap has been keeping tabs on 36 of the most important climate elections, from seats in the House and Senate down to local ballot measures and attorneys general. Though this is far from an exhaustive list of races that will touch the climate this year, we hope it’ll help you piece together how and where climate-related issues are resonating with voters around the country.
A few notes on how this list is organized:
Some key races remain undecided as of Thursday morning. While Republicans took control of the Senate, the House is still up for grabs.
Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District
Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans* vs. Democrat Missy Cotter Smasal
Status: 🔴 Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans wins
Kiggans, the vice chair of the Conservative Climate Caucus and a Trump ally, won her reelection in a tight race. She beat Democrat Missy Cotter Smasal in a swingy district with a diverse electorate of young voters, a robust LGBTQ community, and many military families. Kiggans backed the Default on America Act to repeal clean energy tax credits and has flip-flopped on her support of offshore wind (Kiggans says she supports it, despite voting to slash IRA incentives for the project) while her opponent had called climate change a crisis in need of “urgent action” and bipartisan solutions.
Governor
Republican Mark Robinson vs. Democrat Attorney General Josh Stein
Status: 🔵 Democrat Attorney General Josh Stein wins
North Carolina Attorney General Stein has won the election for governor. The state suffered one of the costliest storms in U.S. history earlier this year due to the flooding from Hurricane Helene, which drew attention to the divide between the two candidates who’d been running for the state’s highest office. Republican Mark Robinson called climate change “junk science” and said he’d attempt to block history and science from being taught in the first through fifth grades. He’d also said not pursuing the development of fossil fuels is an affront to God, and that he’d attempt to keep the “climate change cabal” in “chains.” By contrast, Stein had proposed a path to reach carbon neutrality in the state by 2050 and has a history of taking on polluters and Big Oil price gougers.
Commissioner of Insurance
Republican Mike Causey* vs. Democrat Natasha Marcus
Status: 🔴 Republican Mike Causey wins
Incumbent Republican Insurance Commissioner Causey has successfully fended off a challenge from the Climate Cabinet- backed state Senator Marcus, who took on Causey on the grounds that he’d approved too many rate increases and was too cozy with the companies he was in charge of regulating. Marcus had pushed for greater investment in home hardening and outraised Causey nearly twice over. While insurance commissioner isn’t the sexiest race, the election drew outsized attention in part because of Nationwide’s decision not to renew thousands of homeowner policies in eastern North Carolina in 2023 due to climate change, and the devastating flooding earlier this year from Hurricane Helene.
U.S. Senate
Democrat Rep. Sherrod Brown* vs. Republican Bernie Moreno
Status: 🔴 Republican Bernie Moreno wins
MAGA Republican Bernie Moreno has flipped the seat of three-term Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown. Combined with Republican Jim Justice winning outgoing Democratic Senator Joe Manchin’s seat earlier in the night, Brown’s loss makes it unlikely that Democrats retain control of the Senate. Climate and energy had not played a significant role in the race between Brown and Moreno, though Brown, who once voiced support for a Green New Deal, had broken in recent months with his Democratic colleagues on the IRA’s tax credit for EVs (which he says does not do enough to crack down on imported materials from China and Indonesia), backed overturning the Environmental Protection Agency’s new power plant regulations and tailpipe rules (which are “unrealistic” and a strain on the grid, he said), and joined Manchin in criticizing the Biden administration’s clean hydrogen tax credit. Moreno has stressed that “we need natural gas, we need oil” rather than “this move toward windmills, solar panels.”
Ohio’s 9th Congressional District
Democrat Rep. Marcy Kaptur* vs. Republican state Rep. Derek Merrin
Status: Pending
The race in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District, which includes Toledo and the shores of Lake Erie, is about many things, but it’s also about algae. Kaptur sits on the House Appropriations Committee, where she has supported clean energy-related spending, and she’s also the ranking member of the Energy and Water Development appropriations subcommittee, where she fought for a $1.5 million federal project to combat warming-induced algal blooms in the Great Lakes. Her opponent, Merrin, voted against that bill as a state representative and for laws that would label methane as green energy. She claimed Kaptur and other Democrats’ clean energy pursuits threaten affordability and reliability.
U.S. Senate
Democrat Sen. Bob Casey, Jr.* vs. Republican David McCormick
Status: 🔴 Republican David McCormick wins
McCormick flipped the Pennsylvania Senate seat for Republicans in one of the most energy- and climate-centric races of the year. During the campaign, McCormick had painted the incumbent, Casey, as an enemy of fracking by tying him to Kamala Harris’ prior opposition to the industry. Casey, however, has always supported what he calls “responsible fracking,” including the proposed hydrogen hubs in the state (one of which would use fracked gas). McCormick, whose wife sits on the board of Exxon, has said renewable energy is making the U.S. more reliant on materials from China and that we “need to get back to the energy policies under President Trump,” including by repealing the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and gutting the Inflation Reduction Act.
Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District
Democrat Rep. Susan Wild* vs. Republican state Rep. Ryan Mackenzie
Status: 🔴 Republican state Rep. Ryan Mackenzie wins
Wild conceded her race Wednesday morning to Mackenzie, a Republican lawmaker who had slammed her repeatedly for voting for the “failed” IRA while on the campaign trail. As a state representative, Mackenzie had also voted against environmental and clean energy measures, including rooftop solar panels for schools. In her concession speech, Wild stressed the importance of the continued fight for a “clean and safe planet.”
Attorney General
Democrat Eugene DePasquale vs. Republican Dave Sunday
Status: 🔴 Republican Dave Sunday wins
Sunday had not spoken about climate-related issues during the campaign and didn’t respond to a request for comment on the matter from The Philadelphia Citizen. However the next attorney general of Pennsylvania has an opportunity to pursue climate liability litigation during their term, with Bucks County suing the fossil fuel industry for misleading the public about the dangers of burning oil and gas, E&E News reports. DePasquale, who lost the race, had said he considers environmental justice a top priority.
Referred Law 21
Opportunity: To take a stance on carbon pipelines
Voters in South Dakota rejected a bill passed by their state legislature earlier this year that imposed a number of regulations on potential CO2 pipelines, including a modest $1-per-foot surcharge and requirements about minimum depth. Opponents wary of the carbon capture technology had forced the ballot measure on the law, which they claimed was a giveaway to pipeline companies since it gave the state’s Public Utilities Commissioners the ability to override local ordinances and zoning laws meant to block the pipeline. The rejection of Referred Law 21 will have major implications for the $8 billion Summit Carbon Solutions Pipeline, which would collect CO2 from regional ethanol plants and deliver it to an injection well in North Dakota as a means of dealing with planet-warming emissions. The uncertainty around whether or not Referred Law 21 would pass is part of why the project is one of Heatmap’s most at-risk energy transition proposals.
U.S. Senate
Democrat Rep. Ruben Gallego vs. Republican Kari Lake
Status: Pending
Democrats will need a win in the Grand Canyon State if they have any chance of holding the Senate. While the pitch to undecided voters in Arizona has centered on reproductive and LGBTQ rights, Gallego helped to pass the Inflation Reduction Act in the House and has posited himself as a defender of Arizona’s public lands, water, and energy transition. Lake, a close ally of Trump’s, has boosted falsehoods about wind turbines killing an outsized number of birds and whales, and blamed the state’s heat deaths on drug overdoses. She has called climate change “fake science” and told voters that she’s “not going to be afraid of the weather.”
Arizona’s 1st Congressional District
Republican Rep. David Schweikert* vs. Democrat Amish Shah
Status: Pending
Arizona’s 1st congressional district, covering northeastern Phoenix and Scottsdale, was considered “ reliably Republican” for Schweikert’s first seven terms, but he’s facing a formidable challenge from Shah, a former ER doctor, in the recently redrawn district. Schweikert has taken a more moderate position on the energy transition than other Republicans in the state, arguing that “the government must stop picking winners and losers in the industry” but “we also should continue to expand into renewable energy resources such as wind, solar, hydrogen, nuclear, and geothermal.” Shah, who green groups like the Sierra Club endorse, has pushed for a “healthier Arizona” by standing up to polluters and protecting Arizona’s public lands. This race is one of several that could decide control of the U.S. House.
Arizona’s 6th Congressional District
Republican Rep. Juan Ciscomani* vs. Democrat Kirsten Engel
Status: Pending
Another close race that could decide control of the House is in the Tucson suburbs. Ciscomani is a Trump-endorsed moderate who voted against the IRA but has been friendlier on issues like residential solar projects. Engel’s team has positioned itself as better on water issues than Ciscomani and willing to stand up to foreign mining companies interested in the state’s copper resources.
The Arizona Corporation Commission
Opportunity: Flip three seats from Republicans
Status: Pending
The commission regulates utilities in the state, and in recent years it has actively dismantled clean energy policy and standards with particular aggression toward community solar. Arizona voters have an opportunity to elect representatives who will vote on rules for virtual power plants and can block the repeal of the state’s renewable energy and efficiency standards. There are three Democrats, two Green Party candidates, and three Republicans running for three of the commission’s five total seats.
Colorado’s 8th Congressional District
Democratic Rep. Yadira Caraveo* vs. Republican Gabe Evans
Status: Pending
Though the race in Colorado’s 8th congressional district has focused on the fentanyl and border crises, it encompasses the northern suburbs of Denver, including parts of the oil-and-gas-rich Front Range, where the fossil fuel industry has degraded local air quality for decades. Caraveo’s challenger Evans has dismissed “climate alarmism” and has a 0% score from Conservation Colorado for his “no” votes on everything from regulating toxic “forever chemicals” to transportation infrastructure development to holding gas companies accountable for their environmental impacts. Caraveo, a former pediatrician, has cited air pollution's impact on her patients as one of her motivations for running for office.
Iowa’s 1st Congressional District
Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks* vs. Democrat Christina Bohannan
Status: Pending
Miller-Meeks, who represents the southeasternmost part of the state, also chairs the Conservative Climate Caucus and is a more moderate “ all of the above” energy supporter. Democrats, however, see the race as an opportunity to flip a seat in the House via Bohannan and have out-raised the Republican renewable energy advocate by a 2-to-1 margin, E&E News reports. Bohannan has attacked Miller-Meeks for slow-walking action on addressing climate change through her soft hand with the oil and gas industry.
Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District
Republican Rep. Zach Nunn* vs. Democrat Lanon Baccam
Status: 🔴 Republican Rep. Zach Nunn wins
Democrats in Iowa were hoping for another potential pick-up in the swingy 3rd Congressional District, which includes parts of Des Moines and the Missouri border. Nunn made tax cuts a central component of his re-election bid, and he also voted to repeal tax credits for clean energy three times and bashed the IRA as “telling Iowans you should spend less, you should tighten your belt, but we're gonna go ahead and print off more money and spend more your tax dollars on projects.”
The Outer Continental Shelf Revenues for Coastal Protection and Restoration Fund Amendment
Opportunity: Requiring that federal reserves received by the state for alternative and renewable energy production off its coast go toward protecting the state’s oceanfronts
Status: 🟢 Passed
Louisiana voters opted to require that federal reserve revenue raised from renewable energy production in federal waters off its coast go into a fund that supports coastal restoration projects, including the construction of levees and protection of barrier islands. (Federal revenues received by oil and gas in the state already support this fund.) The Coastal Protection and Restoration Fund has been around since Hurricane Katrina and Rita in 2005, but most of its money came from damages paid after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and those funds will be exhausted by the end of 2031. Proponents argued the amendment is necessary to protect Louisiana’s coasts from worsening storms and rising sea levels, though opponents said it’s more important to keep the funds flexible for any legislative priorities that may arise.
U.S. Senate
Democrat Rep. Elissa Slotkin vs. Republican Mike Rogers
Status: 🔵 Democrat Rep. Elissa Slotkin wins
Despite Democrats’ poor performance in many of Tuesday night’s Senate races, Rep. Elissa Slotkin managed to hold a seat for the party by winning the race to replace outgoing Senator Debbie Stabenow. Her campaign against Republican Mike Rogers had become a referendum on the state’s electric vehicle manufacturing industry, with Rogers alleging Slotkin and other Democrats support a (nonexistent) “EV mandate” that destroys jobs (it doesn’t). The arguments had put Slotkin on her back foot, however: She ran ads telling voters she doesn’t own an electric car.
Michigan’s 8th Congressional District
Republican Paul Junge vs. Democrat state Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet
Status: 🔵 Democrat state Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet wins
Green groups like the LCV Victory Fund and Climate Power poured money and volunteer hours into picking up Michigan’s 8th Congressional District for Democrats, and on Tuesday their work paid off. McDonald Rivet has an impressive climate record, which includes helping to pass Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s 100% renewable energy bill while serving as a state senator. She has also fought for flood reduction infrastructure and lead pipe replacement funding in a district that includes Flint. Meanwhile, Junge dismissed solar and wind energy as not being “dependable,” talked up “clean coal” and expanding oil and gas leasing on public lands, and advocated for resuming construction on the Keystone Pipeline and maintaining the controversial Line 5 crude oil pipeline.
Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District
Republican Rep. Don Bacon* vs. Democrat state Sen. Tony Vargas
Status: Pending
State Senator Tony Vargas is challenging the incumbent legislator in a district that includes Nebraska’s “blue dot” of Omaha. Though the race has centered mainly on issues like abortion, tax cuts, and immigration, Vargas is a former Earth sciences teacher who openly talks about combatting climate change and investing in clean energy (he even cosponsored a bill arguing the state Legislature has a “moral obligation” to do something about the issue). While in office, Bacon voted to repeal tax credits for wind and solar energy, and he’s chalked up extreme weather as having “cyclical impacts.”
New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District
Democrat Rep. Gabe Vasquez* vs. Republican Yvette Herrell
Status: 🔵 Democrat Rep. Gabe Vasquez wins
Democrat Rep. Vasquez managed to fend off a challenge from Republican Herrell, whose seat he flipped in the super swingy 2nd congressional district of New Mexico two years ago. The district includes a large swath of the oil-rich Permian Basin, and Vasquez had walked the line between promoting wind and solar manufacturing as part of the IRA while also “looking out for those fossil fuel communities.” Herrell had said that renewable subsidies create “unfair” competition for oil and gas businesses, and she has a 0% lifetime score from LCV for such positions as voting in favor of rolling back access to public land.
New York’s 4th Congressional District
Republican Rep. Anthony D’Esposito* vs. Democrat Laura Gillen
Status: 🔵 Democrat Laura Gillen wins
Gillen unseated D’Esposito in New York’s 4th Congressional District, which represents the southern part of Nassau County and is the second-wealthiest in the state. A Trump ally, D’Esposito had opposed local offshore wind projects as being “landscape-altering” and had helped to expand offshore drilling. Gillen previously lost to D’Esposito in 2022, but this time, she had played up her experience helping Hempstead recover from Hurricane Sandy and pushed for the protection of the district’s coastlines.
New York’s 17th Congressional District
Republican Rep. Mike Lawler* vs. Democrat Mondaire Jones
Status: 🔴 Rep. Mike Lawler wins
Elon Musk’s PAC dumped money into the race to help Lawler win New York’s 17th Congressional District. Located just north of the liberal bastion of New York City, New York’s 17th Congressional District was safely controlled by Democrats until 2020’s infamous redistricting. Though the map was again redrawn for the 2024 election, NY-17 went virtually untouched in a “win” for Lawler. Besides being a critical race for control of the House, NY-17 also pitted Lawler, a co-sponsor of the Energy Choice Act aiming to protect natural gas, against Jones, who represented a former iteration of the district and supported congestion pricing (except for Lower Hudson Valley residents, of course) and the build-out of renewables. The candidates diverge on their opinion of the closure of the Indian Point nuclear power plant, which Lawler called “foolish;” Jones, somewhat out of step with his party, opposes nuclear power.
Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District
Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden* vs. Democrat Rebecca Cooke
Status: 🔴 Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden wins
Republican incumbent Derrick Van Orden won his reelection campaign for Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District — which covers the exurbs of the Twin Cities and much of the southwestern part of the state — after making gas and energy prices a staple of his campaign. In addition to promoting increased domestic energy production, Van Orden is a member of the Congressional Biofuels Caucus and has pushed for renewable ethanol and sustainable aviation fuel, while at the same time stressing that tax dollars should not go toward “subsidizing the purchase of electric vehicles.” He was also present in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021 to attend the Stop the Steal rally that turned into an assault on the U.S. Capitol. His opponent, Cooke, had said she’d prioritize investment in clean energy infrastructure and new high-speed rail in Wisconsin and addressing PFAS in water.
U.S. Senate
Democrat Sen. Jon Tester* vs. Republican Tim Sheehy
Status: 🔴 Republican Tim Sheehy wins
The LCV Victory Fund named Sheehy as one of its “dirty dozen” priority targets due to his advocacy for privatizing public lands and calling climate change the belief of a leftist cult. Tester, meanwhile, has been described as a “hero” of green groups due to his support of renewable tax credits and stated dreams of owning an electric tractor. Though it had already become apparent that Democrats would lose control of the Senate by the time the race was called, Tester’s defeat is nevertheless a stinging blow to climate advocates who hoped to maintain an advantage there.
Attorney General
Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen* vs. Democrat Ben Alke
Status: 🔴 Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen wins
Knudsen leads the state’s case against the 16 young plaintiffs in Held v. Montana, who are suing lawmakers for allegedly violating their right to a “clean and healthful environment” as enshrined in the state’s constitution. Alke, the Democratic challenger, had the support of Montana Conservation Voters for his prior work in environmental law, including attempts to make public lands less accessible. Though a state panel recently recommended that he be suspended from practicing law for 90 days due to ethics violations, E&E News reported, in the end he carried the race by nearly 20 points.
The Montana Public Service Commission
Opportunity: Electing Independent Elena Evans to the commission
Status: 🟡 Failed
The three open seats on Montana’s PSC remained in Republican control, with incumbent Republican Jennifer Fielder holding out against her challenger, Elena Evans, a geologist and political Independent, who came in fourth. Their race had focused on energy affordability, especially after the Republican commission okayed a 28% rate increase for Northwestern Energy, the biggest utility in the state, last year. Evans had said she’d look closer at building climate resiliency into the state’s grid, while Fielder won on the message that it isn’t her place to weigh in on climate as a utility regulator.
U.S. Senate
Democrat Rep. Jacky Rosen vs. Republican Sam Brown
Status: Pending
Nevada’s junior senator, Jacky Rosen, is a clean energy enthusiast who helped pass the IRA and attempted to expand solar and geothermal energy within the Silver State. Brown has said he would not have supported the IRA and stood disagrees within the way of solar development in the state as a TK IN WHAT ROLE DID HE DO THIS?, while calling for expanding investment in fossil fuels. Brown also said he wants to cut the Department of Energy and any “environmental departments and agencies.”
Portland City Council
Opportunity: Portland voters are electing an entirely new city council and have the chance to choose representatives who will support the Portland Clean Energy Fund
Status: Pending
Portland has a new voting system for all new city council districts, meaning voters in Oregon’s biggest city will elect an entirely new set of representatives this fall. Lead Locally is backing five candidates in the race, including the executive director of an environmental justice group (Candace Avalos) and an energy economist for Bonneville Power Administration (Mitch Green). The next city council will make decisions about the fate of the Portland Clean Energy Fund, which allocates money for clean energy projects, and will weigh whether or not to transition away from fossil fuel infrastructure — namely, the Zenith Energy crude oil shipment facility and rail line in northwest Portland, which is an earthquake risk and contributes to the area’s poor air quality.
At stake is the continued progress of the Portland Clean Energy Fund, which allocates money for clean energy projects, as well as the potential closure of the Zenith Energy crude oil shipment facility in northwest Portland.
Measure 6-219 (Coos County) and Measure 8-116 (Curry County)
Opportunity: To directly express community opposition to offshore wind
Status: 🟡 Passed
Voters in two counties on the southern Oregon Coast expressed overwhelming opposition to offshore wind development in their region. The November ballots in Coos and Curry counties included a non-binding question intended to take the community’s temperature on potential offshore wind projects. More than 60% of Coos County voters registered their feelings against the development of offshore wind projects, while nearly 80% of Curry County voters objected specifically to floating offshore wind.
Proposition 4
Opportunity: Authorizes $10 billion in bonds for water quality, coastal resilience projects, wildfire prevention, and climate-risk protections
Californians have approved a proposition that will issue $10 billion in bonds, which will largely go toward infrastructure projects aimed at mitigating and adapting to climate change, with at least 40% of the funds earmarked for disadvantaged communities. The bill had been backed by organizations like CALFIRE and the National Wildlife Federation and was opposed by Republicans for being unfocused and adding to the state deficit.
Measure GG (Berkeley)
Opportunity: Adopting a tax on natural gas use in most buildings over 15,000 square feet
Status: 🟡 Failed
Over two-thirds of voters in Berkeley rejected a ballot measure backed by climate and labor groups that would have authorized a tax of $2.9647 per therm of natural gas in large buildings, with the funds going toward decarbonization programs. The ballot measure had been an attempt to functionally reinstate the city’s first-in-the-nation prohibition against gas hookups in new buildings, which a federal appeals court struck down last spring. Supporters of Measure GG had raised almost $72,000 by the end of September, while the no campaign — backed by real estate groups that said the tax was prohibitively expensive for small businesses, nonprofits, schools, and grocery stores — had raised $131,000 at the end of September.
Initiative 2117
Opportunity: To vote against repealing the state’s cap and invest program
Status: 🟡 Failed
The Republican-backed effort to repeal Washington state’s new cap and invest program has failed. Both the “no” and “yes” campaigns poured money into their respective sides, making the issue the most expensive ballot measure campaign of this election cycle. If I-2117 had passed, it would have left a gaping hole in the state’s revenue for transit projects, decarbonization initiatives, and clean air and water programs.
Initiative 2066
Opportunity: To support Washington’s transition away from natural gas
Status: Pending
Washingtonians will also vote on I-2066, which would prevent the state from incentivizing a transition from natural gas. The initiative would also jeopardize opportunities to promote thermal energy networks as a gas alternative and bar cities and towns, as well as Washington’s energy code, from “prohibiting, penalizing, or discouraging” gas appliances in buildings, imperiling programs like Seattle’s 2050 net-zero emissions target.
U.S. House Alaska At-Large District
Democrat Rep. Mary Peltola* vs. Republican Nick Begich III
Status: Pending
Peltola has played nice with the fossil fuel industry — defending the Biden administration’s reversal on the Willow Project and supporting the construction of a trans-Alaska natural gas pipeline — but she also boasts an 88% score from the League of Conservation Voters due to her otherwise environmentally friendly voting record, has advocated for more tribal involvement in the environmental review process, and she sits on the influential House Natural Resource Committee. Begich has pitched himself to voters as the better candidate for Alaska’s oil and gas industry, which he claims is besieged by Democrats like Peltola. This race is one of several that could decide control of the U.S. House.
Question 1 (Honolulu)
Opportunity: Would designate 0.5% of property taxes to a Climate Resiliency Fund
Status: 🟢 Passed
Honolulu residents were asked whether they want to create a Climate Resiliency Fund with money raised by half a percent of the city’s property taxes. Advocates argued that the waterfront city needs to prioritize climate the same way it prioritizes affordable housing and the environment, both of which also have funds that receive a half percent of property taxes. Opponents said the creation of an exclusive climate fund will make the revenue less flexible in the case of an unforeseen crisis like rising homelessness or COVID-19, while others worried any shortfalls in the city budget caused by the creation of the fund will result in a rise in property taxes. Honolulu residents approved the measure by a wide margin, with 58% voting in favor, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the correct site of the injection well for the Summit carbon pipeline.
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And more on the week’s biggest fights around renewable energy.
1. Benton County, Washington – The Horse Heaven wind farm in Washington State could become the next Lava Ridge — if the Federal Aviation Administration wants to take up the cause.
2. Dukes County, Massachusetts – The Trump administration signaled this week it will rescind the approvals for the New England 1 offshore wind project.
3. Washtenaw County, Michigan – Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel waded into the fight over an Oracle and OpenAI data center in a rural corner of the state, a major escalation against AI infrastructure development by a prominent Democratic official.
4. Nacogdoches County, Texas – I am eyeing the fight over a solar project in this county for potential chicanery over species and habitat protection.
5. Fulton County, Ohio – In brighter news for the solar industry, Ohio is blessing more of their projects.
A conversation with the co-chair of the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition
This week’s conversation is with Rep. Sean Casten, co-chair of the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition – a group of climate hawkish Democratic lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives. Casten and another lawmaker, Rep. Mike Levin, recently released the coalition’s priority permitting reform package known as the Cheap Energy Act, which stands in stark contrast to many of the permitting ideas gaining Republican support in Congress today. I reached out to talk about the state of play on permitting, where renewables projects fit on Democrats’ priority list in bipartisan talks, and whether lawmakers will ever address the major barrier we talk about every week here in The Fight: local control. Our chat wound up immensely informative and this is maybe my favorite Q&A I’ve had the liberty to write so far in this newsletter’s history.
The following conversation was lightly edited for clarity.
Okay, so to start, how does the Cheap Energy Act fit into the bipartisan permitting talks?
There are two separate theories about how Congress is supposed to work, and neither of these theories is universally true but I think they inform two different approaches: do you believe the purpose of Congress is to craft good policy and then put together political consensus to put that policy forward or do you think the purpose of Congress is to find where political compromise exists and then advance the policy that can proceed along that constraint?
Depending on the situation you take Door 1 or you take Door 2.
What Mike Levin and I have tried to do with our Cheap Energy Act is to say, let’s identify the barriers to deploying cheap energy in the United States, let’s try to find the policy that’ll help consumers first and then try to get that policy done. That approach – because of the way our politics is geographically sorted out in our country – implies a wealth transfer from energy producers to energy consumers. And energy producers in this country tend to be dominant in Republican areas. That’s where coal mining is, oil and gas, logging. And energy consumers are where the population is, which skews Democratic. So on a bipartisan basis you really can’t put consumers first because that is detrimental to producers.
I think that’s why you have these two different approaches going on. I guess I have a bias towards our approach but I think we have to be very candid that the other approach does not remove the barriers to cheap energy. It removes the barriers to dirty energy.
To an overwhelming degree, and I’m slightly exaggerating, but there really aren’t permitting barriers to clean energy. There are a lot of permitting barriers to dirty energy. Which is not to say you can’t weaponize the permitting system to stop clean energy from going forward. But if you’re building a solar farm and it has to have a wire that connects it to a load, your environmental footprint is very small.
Now we’ve done some things in our bill to pre-identify corridors where there is minimal species disruptions, minimal disruption of historical artifacts, and say these are corridors where you can build things fast without guessing. Let’s not kid ourselves here: the Antiquities Act exists for a reason, the Endangered Species Act exists for a reason, and the Clean Water Act exists for a reason. But the footprint of those projects environmentally is just much, much smaller than an oil rig and a pipeline and a refinery because all of those things have the potential to leak nasty chemicals that permanently defile the air, land, and water in the vicinity.
The challenge that manifests through permitting is that if I want to lower your cost of energy, that means by definition I am undercutting your current energy provider. For the most part, that provider has undue power over whether or not you get a permit. And they have an incentive to start pamphleting the neighbors around a new transmission line, for example, to say a line is going to lower people’s property values. That’s because it is an economic threat. The reason I know that’s not an issue is you never see utilities struggle to get a new wire.
I previously reported on how the biggest sticking point in bipartisan permitting talks underway today is whether Republicans will go for tying Trump’s hands in his pursuit to stop federal renewable energy permits. Do you think any GOP lawmakers will actually do that?
Ignore whatever politics someone might have. If you’re representing a district that had a ton of wind power, not a lot of load, and you live 200 miles from a major urban center that was paying a lot for electricity, you would probably be very supportive of making it easier to build the wire to access that market and making it easier for the wind turbines to go up.
I have just described the entire Iowa congressional delegation.
Let’s say in the next election, we flip some of those Iowa seats and now what was Republican is now a Democrat, that wouldn’t change the interests of the Iowa delegation. It would just change the party. So there’s reasons why [Iowa Republican] Randy Feenstra and I have led letters on trying to build SOO Green, this high voltage transmission line that would solve exactly the problem I described there. That’s not because he’s a Republican – it’s because it is in the interests of his community.
But then why do we see so few Republicans standing up to the president in his fight specifically against renewable energy, at least in the permitting talks?
We have a huge problem with the White House that they’ve been entirely captured by the interests of energy producers and they have a rooted interest in making the price of energy expensive. The reason why they’re blocking wind permits, and the reason why they’re accelerating oil and gas exports, is because they’re completely captured by people who want the price of oil and gas to be high and they lose money when the price is low.
But that’s a completely separate series of problems.
Within the House, the leadership of the Democratic Party represents concentrated areas that would like the price of energy to be cheap. The leadership of the Republican Party represents oil and gas extractive areas that would like the price of energy to be high. So a rank and file member of the Democratic Party has no particular problem advocating for energy consumers because they’re not crossing leadership. A rank and file member of the Republican Party has no particular problem advocating for the interests of producers because they’re not crossing leadership.
I think where there’s a slight distinction is you can identify any number of Democrats from the oil and gas patch who will regularly vote with the interests of oil and gas producers, and leadership will understand why they are doing that. But it is much harder to identify members of the Republican Party who are advocating for the interests of consumers and get a pass from leadership to do that.
Mmm. So to close the loop on this, how much of a priority is it for Democrats that whatever bipartisan permitting deal is made won’t be used to speed things up for fossil while Trump continues to put the brakes on every little thing a renewable energy permit requires?
Look, I’ve seen nothing out of the House or Senate that wouldn’t do exactly what you just said. Everything would make the price of energy more expensive and make it harder to do reasonable and thoughtful environmental review. In the House and Senate as currently constituted, we are not going to get a good bill that comes through.
I think within the House you have a growing awareness that energy prices are a problem. Certainly the recent elections in New Jersey and Virginia have made that clear. You need to have a strategy to bring energy costs down. That does create an opportunity prior to next November where folks say, can I do something to help my community?
We’ll see when this bill ultimately gets out whether we get much support. I’ll say we’ve privately found Republican support for pieces of it. The way we fix this problem is by doing what the Republican Party used to be known for, which is competition. There’s no reason why we couldn’t incentivize utilities to make money by saving their consumers money. Or incentivize various pieces of the energy industry to better interconnect their markets so you could always choose the lowest cost option because Adam Smith is a god. Those arguments play much better with Republicans in states that have heavily deregulated. There are individual pieces where we’ve found Republican support. And if you think good policy and economics wins, let’s make good policy and economics wins and build support for it.
Last thing – you said there aren’t permitting barriers to clean energy. But in my reporting, I’m constantly covering local communities opposing renewable energy projects, transmission siting, battery storage. It’s a major barrier to development.
What role do you think the federal government and Congress has in dealing with the issue of local control?
It’s an old saw: depending on the issue, I’ll tell you that I’m supportive of states rights.
There are huge chunks of our energy system that should be federalized but aren’t. As an example, it makes no sense that if you want to build a gas pipeline across multiple states in the U.S., you go to FERC and they are the sole permitting authority and they decide whether or not you get a permit. If you go to the same corridor and build an electric transmission line that has less to worry about because there’s no chance of leaks, you have a different permitting body every time you cross a state line. That’s only because of laws going back to the 1930s that gave FERC sole authority on gas but not on the electric side. Our bill would fix that.
We’ve had this legacy of local control that has – not intentionally – had the practical effect of making it much easier for communities to block electric generation and distribution than natural gas distribution. This necessarily means that we have made natural gas producers more politically powerful and electricity consumers less politically powerful. Whether it was an intentional choice or not, it was a choice.
There are ways consistent with energy policy and congressional law where we can rationalize and have more parity across the energy system to make sure we make the right decision every time.
I also think at the end of the day, markets win. West Virginia one hundred years ago was the place to site your energy-intensive manufacturer because they had a ton of hydro and a ton of coal. They’ve tapped out the hydro, the coal is no longer cheap, and the economy is not good anymore. Then shift to Texas which has built more wind and solar than any state in the country and unusually for a red state has been much more pro-competition in how they regulate their energy markets, that has given them more dynamic electricity costs. Those are two different red states and sets of policy choices.
A renewables project runs into trouble — and wins.
It turns out that in order to get a wind farm approved in Trump’s America, you have to treat the project like a local election. One developer working in North Dakota showed the blueprint.
Earlier this year, we chronicled the Longspur wind project, a 200-megawatt project in North Dakota that would primarily feed energy west to Minnesota. In Morton County where it would be built, local zoning officials seemed prepared to reject the project – a significant turn given the region’s history of supporting wind energy development. Based on testimony at the zoning hearing about Longspur, it was clear this was because there’s already lots of turbines spinning in Morton County and there was a danger of oversaturation that could tip one of the few friendly places for wind power against its growth. Longspur is backed by Allete, a subsidiary of Minnesota Power, and is supposed to help the utility meet its decarbonization targets.
Except by the time the zoning officials’ decision came before the full county commission, the winds were once again blowing at Longspur’s back and county officials denied the denial. Then a few weeks later, the zoning board reconsidered Longspur and opted to approve it. Now Longspur has the permits it needs from the county.
“They have the right to put the towers on their land,” Morton County commission vice chair Jackie Buckley told me. “And Longspur has crossed their Ts and dotted their Is.”
I investigated what happened here and it turns out, Allete saw what happened at the hearing and worked extremely hard to bring supporters out when the zoning officials’ decision came before the full Morton County commission. They brought with them a bevy of landowners with a future Longspur turbine sited on their property to speak, so many that it severely outnumbered the opposition. One after another, residents spoke out against the anti-wind naysayers, a phenomenon I rarely see in fights over renewable energy projects in the United States. One resident called the wind turbines “a windfall” that was ensuring their family’s “retirement plans.” Another compared it to neighbors denying a farm the right to build a barn. Multiple people said if coal mining could happen in Morton County, why couldn’t wind?
“We just tried to understand, even internally. We asked, ‘Why didn’t we have more proponents speaking?’” Todd Simmons, Allete’s vice president of generation operations, told me in an interview this week about the project’s initial rejection. He said after the initial zoning rejection, the company then went door to door asking supporters to come testify. “We tried to make sure that landowners knew that you may have to show up and be more than present. We wanted a civil meeting, and we did not want an argumentative meeting, [but] they were not coached.”
Candidly, this style of outreach reminds me a lot of door-to-door campaign canvassing and a well-worn phrase in professional politics: it all comes down to turnout. And Allete treated the situation that way, telling me that the initial rejection to them was because of an absence, not conflict. “When the folks who were anti- spoke, and the rest of the crowd did not say anything, there was a belief that silence was [an] agreement by the rest,” Simmons told me.
Buckley told me that some of these supporters were actually at the zoning hearing too, but did not want to speak up because “they wouldn’t talk against their neighbor.” Out in rural communities like Morton County, “they all know each other – it’s all one neighborhood community.” In the end, the county commission felt it couldn’t deny people’s property rights, let alone invite whatever legal ramifications would arrive from denying the project in spite of the support from these property owners. “I think it had to do more with private property rights and the people that were in favor of it have property rights, same as do the people in opposition,” Simmons said.
I think there’s an important conclusion to be drawn from what happened in Morton County for any renewable energy project developer out there dealing with local opposition. Too often I watch and listen to local permitting hearings where the dissenting voices are the only ones raised. There are obvious risks for anyone in a small community who does speak up, as I’ve heard of threats against people who come out in support of a project, from anti-renewables homeowners. But it’s clear from what happened to Longspur there is strength in numbers when supporters are mobilized to speak up.
Allete told me they saw an education in the Longspur permitting process too. “It doesn’t matter where you’re building,” SImmons said. “Working with the landowners, and the public agencies…. The sooner you can help them understand what the project is actually about, the better you are.”