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Climate change was a major topic.
If we learned anything new from the first Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee on Wednesday night, it was not what anyone planned to do about climate change. The candidates failed to expand on their already scant or nonexistent platforms. Almost all of them failed to acknowledge that climate change was caused by humans.
But what was notable was the fact that the issue has finally earned a more prominent spot on the debate stage. Four years ago, activists railed against Democratic primary debate moderators for not asking any questions about climate change until the second hour of the program. The Fox News hosts got to the issue in about 20 minutes.
Below we’ve recapped what happened next, and the other most remarkable moments of the night for global warming, decarbonization, and energy.
Getty Images/Heatmap Illustration
North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, making his first comments in the debate, used a prompt to discuss the economy as a chance to rail against President Biden's historic climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act.
“The economy, energy, and national security are all tied together. We’ve got a plan, the $1.2 trillion of Green New Deal spending in the ‘Inflation Creation Act,’ that’s subsidizing China,” Burgum said. His primarily claim: That IRA subsidies will benefit Chinese battery and renewable manufacturers.
“If we’re going to stop buying oil from the Middle East and start buying batteries from China, we’re going to trade OPEC for Sinopec.”
The IRA, outside of the U.S., has come under fire for its stringent domestic production requirements for electric vehicles and includes domestic content bonuses. —Will Kubzansky
Screenshot courtesy of Fox News
It only took 20 minutes for the Republican debate’s big climate change question to be asked.
Moderator Bret Baier chronicled the summer’s disasters, mentioning missing people in Maui, the rarity of a tropical storm in California, and the overheated ocean in Florida. Then Fox News played a clip from a young conservative.
Alexander Diaz, a student at the Catholic University of America on behalf of the conservative group Young America’s Foundation, noted the importance of climate change to young voters, teeing up Fox News’ Martha MacCallum to ask a simple question: “We want to start on this with a show of hands. Do you believe … human behavior is causing climate change? Raise your hand if you do.”
No candidates had raised their hand — although former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson seemed to be inching his hand up — when Ron DeSantis interrupted to say: “We’re not schoolchildren, let’s have the debate.” —Will Kubzansky and Emily Pontecorvo
Getty Images/Heatmap Illustration
Vivek Ramaswamy initially introduced himself to the American people on Wednesday night as a “skinny guy with a funny last name” — but perhaps his name was more aptly made, at least with many young conservatives, by calling “the climate change agenda … a hoax.”
Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur running for his first political office, has previously claimed he’s not a “climate denier,” but also played coy, saying global warming will not be “entirely bad.” It was also not the first time he’s attacked what he calls “the climate cult in America.” In a video shared by his Twitter account this spring, Ramaswamy slammed climate activists for allegedly saying “that you have to abandon carbon emissions at all costs if you live in the United States.” He added, “It’s a cult that says … ‘We’re against nuclear energy’ … because nuclear energy might be too good at solving the alleged clean energy problem, which means they couldn’t use the climate as an excuse to advance a very different agenda.” Nuclear energy has historically been something of a bogeyman for environmentalists, who fear waste and meltdowns, but the nuclear power industry is also receiving billions of dollars from Biden’s two biggest pieces of legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Wednesday’s “hoax” comment specifically came in reaction to the Fox News moderators trying to push the candidates into a yes-or-no answer about whether humans are responsible for climate change. Notably, no one immediately raised their hand. An overwhelming consensus of scientists — 99.9% of them, The Guardian found — say climate change is caused by mankind.
Ramaswamy’s answer was clearly an attempt to align his candidacy with former President Trump, who has called climate change "a hoax," “a total hoax,” “an expensive hoax,” and “a total, and very expensive, hoax.” Somewhat surprisingly, Ramaswamy's quip was met by audience boos — as well as interruptions from other candidates, who took issue with him calling himself the “only person on the stage who wasn’t bought and paid for.”
Earlier in the debate, a number of candidates had tip-toed around the possibility of “open[ing] up … energy production,” though Ramaswamy — who’s been said to be gunning to be “Republicans’ next Trump” — was characteristically blunt on that point, as well. “This isn’t that complicated, guys,” the 38-year-old chided his peers. “Unlock American energy. Drill. Frack. Burn coal. Embrace nuclear.” —Jeva Lange
Getty Images/Heatmap Illustration
When moderator Martha MacCallum asked the candidates to raise their hand if they believe that human behavior is causing climate change, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis took issue with the question.
“We’re not schoolchildren,” DeSantis immediately snapped back before anyone had put a hand in the air. “Let’s have the debate.” But instead of having the debate, he pivoted to bashing President Biden and showing off his extreme weather bonafides. “Biden was on the beach while those people were suffering,” he said, referencing the president’s response to the wildfires in Maui. “As someone who’s handled disasters in Florida, you gotta be activated.”
From there, the moment descended into chaos. Vivek Ramaswamy interrupted to say the “climate change agenda” was a “hoax.” Christie jumped in to toss insults at Ramaswamy.
The only candidate who managed to get a word in about their stance on the issue was Nikki Haley. ”We care about clean air and clean water but there’s a right way to do it,“ she said. “First of all, is climate change real? Yes it is.”
Haley's sole proposal was to push China and India to cut their emissions. She accused Biden of putting money in China’s pocket by subsidizing electric vehicles, and said the subsidies are “not working.” However, car makers have responded to the Inflation Reduction Act’s subsidies by investing millions in domestic manufacturing and domestic supply chains.
At the end, President Biden chimed in on Twitter with the last word. —Emily Pontecorvo
This article was first published at 9:48 PM ET on Wednesday, August 23. It was last updated at 11:44 PM ET.
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New York City may very well be the epicenter of this particular fight.
It’s official: the Moss Landing battery fire has galvanized a gigantic pipeline of opposition to energy storage systems across the country.
As I’ve chronicled extensively throughout this year, Moss Landing was a technological outlier that used outdated battery technology. But the January incident played into existing fears and anxieties across the U.S. about the dangers of large battery fires generally, latent from years of e-scooters and cellphones ablaze from faulty lithium-ion tech. Concerned residents fighting projects in their backyards have successfully seized upon the fact that there’s no known way to quickly extinguish big fires at energy storage sites, and are winning particularly in wildfire-prone areas.
How successful was Moss Landing at enlivening opponents of energy storage? Since the California disaster six months ago, more than 6 gigawatts of BESS has received opposition from activists explicitly tying their campaigns to the incident, Heatmap Pro® researcher Charlie Clynes told me in an interview earlier this month.
Matt Eisenson of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Law agreed that there’s been a spike in opposition, telling me that we are currently seeing “more instances of opposition to battery storage than we have in past years.” And while Eisenson said he couldn’t speak to the impacts of the fire specifically on that rise, he acknowledged that the disaster set “a harmful precedent” at the same time “battery storage is becoming much more present.”
“The type of fire that occurred there is unlikely to occur with modern technology, but the Moss Landing example [now] tends to come up across the country,” Eisenson said.
Some of the fresh opposition is in rural agricultural communities such as Grundy County, Illinois, which just banned energy storage systems indefinitely “until the science is settled.” But the most crucial place to watch seems to be New York City, for two reasons: One, it’s where a lot of energy storage is being developed all at once; and two, it has a hyper-saturated media market where criticism can receive more national media attention than it would in other parts of the country.
Someone who’s felt this pressure firsthand is Nick Lombardi, senior vice president of project development for battery storage company NineDot Energy. NineDot and other battery storage developers had spent years laying the groundwork in New York City to build out the energy storage necessary for the city to meet its net-zero climate goals. More recently they’ve faced crowds of protestors against a battery storage facility in Queens, and in Staten Island endured hecklers at public meetings.
“We’ve been developing projects in New York City for a few years now, and for a long time we didn’t run into opposition to our projects or really any sort of meaningful negative coverage in the press. All of that really changed about six months ago,” Lombardi said.
The battery storage developer insists that opposition to the technology is not popular and represents a fringe group. Lombardi told me that the company has more than 50 battery storage sites in development across New York City, and only faced “durable opposition” at “three or four sites.” The company also told me it has yet to receive the kind of email complaint flood that would demonstrate widespread opposition.
This is visible in the politicians who’ve picked up the anti-BESS mantle: GOP mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa’s become a champion for the cause, but mayor Eric Adams’ “City of Yes” campaign itself would provide for the construction of these facilities. (While Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani has not focused on BESS, it’s quite unlikely the climate hawkish democratic socialist would try to derail these projects.)
Lombardi told me he now views Moss Landing as a “catalyst” for opposition in the NYC metro area. “Suddenly there’s national headlines about what’s happening,” he told me. “There were incidents in the past that were in the news, but Moss Landing was headline news for a while, and that combined with the fact people knew it was happening in their city combined to create a new level of awareness.”
He added that six months after the blaze, it feels like developers in the city have a better handle on the situation. “We’ve spent a lot of time in reaction to that to make sure we’re organized and making sure we’re in contact with elected officials, community officials, [and] coordinated with utilities,” Lombardi said.
And more on the biggest conflicts around renewable energy projects in Kentucky, Ohio, and Maryland.
1. St. Croix County, Wisconsin - Solar opponents in this county see themselves as the front line in the fight over Trump’s “Big Beautiful” law and its repeal of Inflation Reduction Act tax credits.
2. Barren County, Kentucky - How much wood could a Wood Duck solar farm chuck if it didn’t get approved in the first place? We may be about to find out.
3. Iberia Parish, Louisiana - Another potential proxy battle over IRA tax credits is going down in Louisiana, where residents are calling to extend a solar moratorium that is about to expire so projects can’t start construction.
4. Baltimore County, Maryland – The fight over a transmission line in Maryland could have lasting impacts for renewable energy across the country.
5. Worcester County, Maryland – Elsewhere in Maryland, the MarWin offshore wind project appears to have landed in the crosshairs of Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency.
6. Clark County, Ohio - Consider me wishing Invenergy good luck getting a new solar farm permitted in Ohio.
7. Searcy County, Arkansas - An anti-wind state legislator has gone and posted a slide deck that RWE provided to county officials, ginning up fresh uproar against potential wind development.
Talking local development moratoria with Heatmap’s own Charlie Clynes.
This week’s conversation is special: I chatted with Charlie Clynes, Heatmap Pro®’s very own in-house researcher. Charlie just released a herculean project tracking all of the nation’s county-level moratoria and restrictive ordinances attacking renewable energy. The conclusion? Essentially a fifth of the country is now either closed off to solar and wind entirely or much harder to build. I decided to chat with him about the work so you could hear about why it’s an important report you should most definitely read.
The following chat was lightly edited for clarity. Let’s dive in.
Tell me about the project you embarked on here.
Heatmap’s research team set out last June to call every county in the United States that had zoning authority, and we asked them if they’ve passed ordinances to restrict renewable energy, or if they have renewable energy projects in their communities that have been opposed. There’s specific criteria we’ve used to determine if an ordinance is restrictive, but by and large, it’s pretty easy to tell once a county sends you an ordinance if it is going to restrict development or not.
The vast majority of counties responded, and this has been a process that’s allowed us to gather an extraordinary amount of data about whether counties have been restricting wind, solar and other renewables. The topline conclusion is that restrictions are much worse than previously accounted for. I mean, 605 counties now have some type of restriction on renewable energy — setbacks that make it really hard to build wind or solar, moratoriums that outright ban wind and solar. Then there’s 182 municipality laws where counties don’t have zoning jurisdiction.
We’re seeing this pretty much everywhere throughout the country. No place is safe except for states who put in laws preventing jurisdictions from passing restrictions — and even then, renewable energy companies are facing uphill battles in getting to a point in the process where the state will step in and overrule a county restriction. It’s bad.
Getting into the nitty-gritty, what has changed in the past few years? We’ve known these numbers were increasing, but what do you think accounts for the status we’re in now?
One is we’re seeing a high number of renewables coming into communities. But I think attitudes started changing too, especially in places that have been fairly saturated with renewable energy like Virginia, where solar’s been a presence for more than a decade now. There have been enough projects where people have bad experiences that color their opinion of the industry as a whole.
There’s also a few narratives that have taken shape. One is this idea solar is eating up prime farmland, or that it’ll erode the rural character of that area. Another big one is the environment, especially with wind on bird deaths, even though the number of birds killed by wind sounds big until you compare it to other sources.
There are so many developers and so many projects in so many places of the world that there are examples where either something goes wrong with a project or a developer doesn’t follow best practices. I think those have a lot more staying power in the public perception of renewable energy than the many successful projects that go without a hiccup and don’t bother people.
Are people saying no outright to renewable energy? Or is this saying yes with some form of reasonable restrictions?
It depends on where you look and how much solar there is in a community.
One thing I’ve seen in Virginia, for example, is counties setting caps on the total acreage solar can occupy, and those will be only 20 acres above the solar already built, so it’s effectively blocking solar. In places that are more sparsely populated, you tend to see restrictive setbacks that have the effect of outright banning wind — mile-long setbacks are often insurmountable for developers. Or there’ll be regulations to constrict the scale of a project quite a bit but don’t ban the technologies outright.
What in your research gives you hope?
States that have administrations determined to build out renewables have started to override these local restrictions: Michigan, Illinois, Washington, California, a few others. This is almost certainly going to have an impact.
I think the other thing is there are places in red states that have had very good experiences with renewable energy by and large. Texas, despite having the most wind generation in the nation, has not seen nearly as much opposition to wind, solar, and battery storage. It’s owing to the fact people in Texas generally are inclined to support energy projects in general and have seen wind and solar bring money into these small communities that otherwise wouldn’t get a lot of attention.