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We chatted about U.S. Wind’s project off the coast of Ocean City, oil jobs, and the future of the IRA.
I may have met the future of conservative climate politics on Tuesday, and he was standing next to piles of dead fish.
Larry Hogan, a Republican former governor of Maryland, is campaigning for an open Senate seat in one of the bluest states in the country. He faces an uphill run against Angela Alsobrooks, an acolyte of Vice President Kamala Harris and a Black woman who runs one of the state’s most populous and diverse counties, Prince George’s. Before President Biden dropped out as the Democrats’ nominee for president, internal polls indicated that Hogan had a chance; since Biden’s exit, despite Hogan’s name ID from eight years in Annapolis, his chances for victory now appear uncertain.
So I was surprised when, out of the blue, as Democrats were convening in Chicago around Harris as their nominee, Hogan’s team invited me out to a campaign stop along the Chesapeake Bay. Hogan was going to announce new plans on how he’d fight for protecting the Bay if elected, and I’d get to ask the candidate whatever I wanted about … climate. Not the usual offer from a Republican congressional campaign.
Hogan, however, has a long track record of bucking his party on climate change, and could be regarded as one of the most aggressive Republican governors on the issue in modern American history. In 2017, he signed into law one of the nation’s few state-wide fracking bans. In 2018, after then President Trump began pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, he joined with other states to meet the goals of the accord regardless. Three years later, he oversaw the creation of a plan to reduce Maryland’s emissions 50% by 2030 and achieving “net-zero” by 2045. Those emissions targets happen to be the same ones Alsobrooks has endorsed, too.
I went to his campaign website to see what it says about climate and found almost nothing. Nowhere on Hogan’s website is there a discussion of emissions or energy policy, and climate-related laws like the Inflation Reduction Act barely come up. The only possible reference I can find is one paragraph saying he’d “stand against unaffordable spending and mandates raising [the] cost of energy, food, and basic necessities.”
So I said yes. Not just because I’m a Marylander who deeply cares about the future of the planet, but also because of Hogan’s importance for the future of the IRA. If he somehow found a way to win, he’d be a crucial voice on the future of the landmark climate law, the fate of which will be decided next year as lawmakers look to rewrite tax policy.
That was why, on Tuesday I woke up at the crack of dawn and drove two hours to Tilghman Island, a bucolic enclave popular for fishing and tourism along the eastern shorelines of Maryland. It might’ve been a rural part of the state, but every now and then along my route I’d see an array of solar panels in front of a farm or a house. I arrived at the meeting place to find it was a seafood plant along the water. Hogan arrived right after me in a jet black SUV and exited in attire so casual you’d hardly recognize him as a two-term governor: a simple baseball cap, a dull blue shirt, and, believe it or not, shorts.
I walked alongside Hogan and people who ran the processing plant as they surveyed flats of oyster shells and the guts of catfish I was told were an invasive species in the area. Finally, Hogan and I settled down to chat in an open garage. There are “more Republicans who actually are more environmentally sensitive than you think,” he told me, “but they’re certainly not in the majority, and they’re not the ones getting all the attention. My hope is to try to be a voice to get them to do some of the things we did and focus on.”
Of the IRA himself, he told me, “It concerns me that it was rushed through in a very partisan way without a single Republican vote. I think there are some really good things in it. I think there’s some things that weren’t very well thought out.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Things that are going to have a more harmful effect on the economy and killing jobs,” he said, adding that “we ought to at least look at how to tweak it.”
That statement puzzled me — recent analysis indicates at least 334,000 new jobs have been created since the law was enacted in 2022. But writ large, the transition to clean energy will mean people lose jobs in the oil and gas industry — was that what he was referring to?
“Yeah. I mean, we’re not ready,” Hogan replied. “It was going to shut down existing industries without any transition period when we didn’t have the ability to provide enough energy to accomplish what we wanted. We just gotta figure out a way to make the transition, but you can’t do it too rapidly or it’s going to have the opposite impact.”
The funny thing about Republicans talking about climate and the IRA is that you essentially need a translator to know their positions. Lawmakers will say one thing on the record to a reporter and then the next minute say the exact opposite thing off the record. The truth is — and I know this from many years of covering Capitol Hill — many Republican politicians support the vast majority of this law and will never admit it.
Most voters today still do not know much about the IRA, or even what the Biden administration has done on climate change. That’s unlikely to change soon as Democrats have so far eschewed mentioning the topic much at all, including during their convention in Chicago this week. Congressional Democrats put a lot of time and effort over the last year into messaging the law and their other signature industrial policy achievements. But for now, it seems it’ll be largely absent from the campaign trail.
Should Republicans take full control of Congress and the presidency, the IRA is in legitimate danger from influential coalitions on the furthest flanks of the right-wing. Think the Heritage Foundation. The Freedom Caucus. The Marjorie Taylor Greenes and Jim Jordans and Lauren Boeberts roaming the halls of the Capitol. These power-brokers have proven through fights over the debt ceiling and government funding that they appear willing to put their votes where their mouths are to satisfy a political base of support that cares less about corporations and climate change than sticking it to liberals and the left. Hogan is correct that the IRA was passed entirely by Democrats without a single Republican vote, making it a ripe target for partisan pummeling.
And yet there’s so much in the IRA that Republicans typically should like. Climate policy that’s heavy on carrots for big business and light on penalties for corporate pollution has long been Republicans’ preferred route. Why does the most moderate Republican candidate for Senate in one of the nation’s bluest states have to bash the climate law at all, let alone claim its killing jobs? I’ll be honest, when I went out to the Bay to meet Hogan, I thought I was about to hear the first major Republican endorsement of the IRA.
I asked John Hart, a fellow Marylander who helps run the conservative climate group C3 Solutions, about why Hogan would claim the IRA is killing jobs when there’s no evidence to back that up. Hart authored a campaign messaging book for Republicans trying to talk about climate change and energy policy without denying the existence of the problem, on the one hand, or alienating their own voters on the other.
“It’s an American cultural and political problem,” Hart told me. “You have to be very cognizant of those head-scratching moments, and you have to address that very clearly.”
There’s two reasons why Republicans like Hogan have to bash the IRA even if they might support a lot of the underlying climate provisions, he said: GOP voters instinctually see such ideas as “picking winners and losers,” and the climate law has been lumped in with other policies like auto regulations that Republicans largely oppose.
“Candidates are viewing it not through the narrow lens of what that legislation alone does, but how it fits into a broader agenda,” Hart added. “With the IRA, [it becomes] part of a broader effort. A lot of Republicans do believe that the Biden administration wants to ban trucks.”
Hogan did not develop his approach to climate action overnight. While as governor, he pushed for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50% through 2030, he also opposed going any faster than that. (The legislature ultimately enacted the more aggressive plans without Hogan's signature.) The Alsobrooks campaign has attacked him on this, and in a statement to me said that if elected, “Larry Hogan would give [S]enate Republicans the majority they need to gut the IRA and roll back efforts to protect our environment.”
Blake Kernen, a spokesperson for the Hogan campaign, told me Hogan is “glad the [IRA] created clean energy jobs like he did as Governor in Maryland.” His concerns with the law have to do with “some of the new taxes and overspending in the bill [that] has and will contribute to inflation and job loss, and is disappointed that the bill was forced through a party line vote.”
Governor Hogan also loudly backed wind development off the Maryland coast, which is now a contentious issue along the eastern shore.
Ocean City, a popular vacation destination, is now considering legal action against the federal government if it approves efforts by U.S. Wind, a subsidiary of an Italian wind energy company, to actually build turbines off the state’s coastline. It’s a conflict that mirrors other fights waged by beach communities, resort areas, and fishing hubs against offshore wind. These parts of the country are far removed from cities and often Republican-leaning, and the loudest champions of these grievances have also been prominent GOP politicians. Most notable, of course, has been former President Donald Trump, who’s pledged to halt new permits, but Republican policymakers at all levels from New Jersey, New York, and Virginia, among others, have all been making political hay from wind farm projects in their states.
Hogan has made a name for himself in recent years as a bulwark against Trump and his brand of politics. But when I brought up Ocean City’s legal threat, his passionate support of the town led him to interrupt my question.
“They probably will and probably should [sue]. That’s an example where I was very supportive of wind energy and creating a market for that in our state to create jobs and further the production of wind energy. But on that project, there was not very much transparency. They didn’t work with the local community very much. That’s impacting the fishing industry, the tourism industry, and they’re concerned that their entire livelihoods are going to be ruined.”
Heatmap’s own polling shows the political vulnerability renewable energy faces from the environmental impacts of development. Yet earlier in our interview, Hogan had boasted about the jobs wind has brought to the transportation and logistics hub Tradepoint Atlantic in the Port of Baltimore. He spoke effusively about the jobs in industries like welding that wind development creates. (One tidbit: His campaign released an ad a few days ago featuring a Democrat-registered welder in Baltimore who says they’re voting for Hogan, with no mention of the wind industry.)
In my mind, at least, failing to build those turbines could present a bigger risk to Ocean City in the long run than building them. If we didn’t construct them, it would take away an opportunity to dramatically increase the amount of renewable energy available for Maryland to wean off of carbon-based power. Failing to do so would pose a longer-term threat to the town of Ocean City from sea level rise and intensifying extreme weather.
So I told Hogan that while, as a Marylander, I couldn’t imagine wind turbines at Ocean City, I also couldn’t stop thinking about the trade-offs. I asked him, how does he view those tradeoffs?
Hogan stood firm. “I think you can accomplish the goals without putting them on the beach. I think you move them further out. It’s a pretty simple process. The federal government required them to put them in a place that no one wants. There’s no reason for it.”
This began to sound like some sort of Republican party line, trying to sell voters on a vision of the future that derails the energy transition along the way. But as one of my personal favorite Republican-splainers on energy, Sarah Hunt of the Rainey Center, explained to me, this kind of misconstrues how politics ordinarily works.
The normal thing is that constituents go to their representatives and voice their concerns, and a lot of these beach towns and fishing areas just happen to be Republican. In other parts of the country like Louisiana, where the politicians are more open to offshore oil, they’re similarly supportive of offshore wind.
“I think that is individual to Maryland and specific areas of Maryland,” Hunt told me. “I think offshore wind is a wonderful thing. I think it’s legitimate to say it doesn’t belong everywhere, and I think it’s reasonable to have a process for communities to provide input into the placement of such projects.”
After Hogan and I concluded our interview, I drove home in the gas-powered car I inherited from my late grandparents and passed more solar paneling in front of rural homes. Driving over the Chesapeake Bay, I tried to imagine seeing wind turbines on the horizon one day, and a world where Republicans support tax credits for renewables while fighting to make sure those projects adhere to the Clean Water Act. May we live in interesting times, I guess.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that Maryland was already a member of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative when Hogan became governor.
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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.