Republicans Have No New Ideas About Energy

National political conventions don’t make for the best TV. Prime-time speeches are delivered by a parade of party celebrities and last for only a few minutes — typically just enough time to bash gas prices (nonsensically) and get in a few digs at the opposition. The highlight of the Republican National Convention’s broadcast out of Milwaukee on Monday night was, in fact, entirely wordless: former President Donald Trump’s walk across the floor with a conspicuous white bandage over his ear.

The only words that really mattered on Monday were reviewed and approved behind closed doors. “It’s a different kind of platform,” Tennessee Senator and Chair of the Committee on the Platform Marsha Blackburn said by way of introduction during her speech yesterday evening. Reviewing how the 2024 Republican Party Platform’s energy sections compare to the ones in 2016 (the GOP did not write a new platform for its convention in 2020), it’s clear how true that actually is.

Eight years ago, the Republican platform included “Agriculture, Energy, and the Environment” among its six chapters, describing goals such as “expedited siting processes” for transmission lines; better forest management to prevent wildfires; the “development of all forms of energy that are marketable in a free economy without subsidies, including coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear power, and hydropower” and renewable sources like wind and solar by “private capital”; as well as the rejection of “the agendas of both the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement.” The goals were reasonably detailed, at least enough so that the 2016 platform ran a full 50 pages longer than the 2024 version. (Trump, of course, has little patience for the written word.)

The 2024 Republican platform gets to its point much more quickly by design. “MAKE AMERICA THE DOMINANT ENERGY PRODUCER IN THE WORLD, BY FAR!” is fourth on the priority list. That’s an easy enough goal since the U.S. is already the world’s dominant energy producer, at least in oil and natural gas, the favored fuels of both Trump and Vance. The platform further promises to “DRILL, BABY, DRILL” its way to the U.S. becoming “Energy Independent and even Dominant again” — another easy goal since the country is already energy independent by multiple definitions. Coal, until recently a staple Republican talking point, gets just one blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference.

The platform offers no specific plan for improving on President Biden’s record oil and gas production numbers. It does, however, state that the party will ensure “Reliable and Abundant Low Cost Energy,” a statement that, by omission, implies the party will do so without the same level of all-caps enthusiasm for electrification. This will be quite a feat as the renewable cost curve continues to trend down.

Also new to the platform in 2024 is hostility toward electric vehicles, a favorite talking point of Trump’s on the campaign trail and a longtime punching bag of Vance’s. The party claims that it can “Save the American Auto Industry” by “reversing harmful Regulations, canceling Biden’s Electric Vehicle and other Mandates, and preventing the importation of Chinese vehicles.” Given that there isn’t actually an EV mandate, that sounds pretty much “exactly like what Democrats want,” the economic columnist Noah Smith wrote in his recent breakdown of the platform.

Finally, alongside other pressingly important issues to the American public like making Washington, D.C., “the most beautiful capital city,” the 2024 Republican platform gestures toward restoring “genuine Conservation efforts.” Such a promise, buried at the end of the document, rings especially hollow given that Trump oversaw the largest reduction of protected land in U.S. history.

Of course, shabby promises are to be expected. Party platforms are non-binding and, as Smith also points out, they reveal far more about who Republicans are appealing to, and how, than what they actually plan to do once they’re in power.

The pared-down energy and climate sections in the 2024 platform don’t necessarily mean Trump will keep Biden-era policies largely intact, then. If anything, they simply leave more room for Trump to do whatever he wants if — or when? — he wins back the White House.