Backstage, the RNC Was All About All of the Above

The longest presidential nomination acceptance speech in history included not one single second on climate change. That’s table stakes, though, for the party of Donald Trump. More noteworthy, perhaps: During Trump’s 92-minute speech Thursday night at the conclusion of the Republican National Convention, he used the word “energy” fewer times than he said “beautiful,” “invasion,” or his own name.

When Trump did reference energy, it was almost exclusively to distinguish himself from the incumbent’s policies. “They’ve spent trillions of dollars on things having to do with the Green New Scam,” he said in an apparent reference to the Inflation Reduction Act, the most significant action the U.S. government has ever taken on clean energy. He vowed to redirect IRA funds to “roads, bridges, and dams,” and to both “drill, baby, drill” and end the (nonexistent) “electric vehicle mandate” on his first day in office. Such adversarial rhetoric was par for the course for the RNC’s primetime speakers — would-be future cabinet member Doug Burgum earlier this week warned of an “era” of “brownouts and blackouts” if Democrats stay in power, and Trump’s running mate JD Vance painted himself as an ally of “the energy worker” in fracking states.

But the energy (if you will) offstage was cheerier. The clean energy advocates I spoke with left Milwaukee feeling optimistic, and told me that RNC attendees were generally receptive to an “all of the above” energy approach — a term that refers to the build-out of emissions-lowering renewable energy in combination with the continued domestic production of fossil fuels.

Arguably, “all of the above” is what President Biden is already doing, which might be why it didn’t make primetime; political conventions are hype events, meant to build enthusiasm for a candidate, promote the party platform, and, above all, distinguish what makes them different from the other guys. Republican rank-and-file voters and state delegates are “not going to be receptive to a ‘climate change’ message,” Heather Reams, the president of the center-right clean energy advocacy group Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, told me — or at least not in those words.

“I know there are a lot of my friends on the left who are very nervous looking at this convention,” Reams said. But “Republicans engage differently on climate and energy policy than Democrats, and that doesn’t make it wrong.”

And engage they did. Energy was reportedly a topic of robust conversation during the un-televised portions of the convention, especially regarding affordability, domestic supply chains, and a strong economy. “Every day there was a central energy event with policymakers, members of Congress, governors, state legislators, and energy sector leaders talking about the opportunities to grow American clean energy across the country,” Jeremy Harrell, the CEO of ClearPath, a conservative clean energy advocacy group, told me. “It was really incredible to see hundreds of people getting together across town in different forums to talk about the opportunities in this space.”

ClearPath and CRES, along with the American Conservation Coalition and the Conservative Climate Foundation, hosted a joint event promoting Republican-led climate change policies that more than 250 people attended, according to Harrell. Speakers included Utah congressman and Republican senatorial candidate John Curtis and Iowa congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks, both members of the Conservative Climate Caucus. Reince Priebus, the former RNC chairman and one-time White House chief of staff under Trump, also delivered remarks “really doubling down” on clean energy as a whole, Harrell said, including raising questions like, “How do we invest in American energy innovation? How do we grow energy and manufacturing jobs? How do we reduce our dependence on Russian and Chinese energy and resources, and do it all while reducing global emissions?”

Reports of Republican receptiveness to an “all of the above” energy approach won’t satisfy everyone, of course. Some climate advocates have criticized the strategy as not going far enough since it doesn’t eliminate new carbon pollution. For example, as Lori Lodes — the executive director of Climate Power, a pro-Democratic strategic communications organization that has slammed Biden for approving new drilling projects — stressed in a RNC press conference this week, Republicans’ return to power “would see Big Oil CEOs get richer as working families face job losses, higher costs, fewer choices, and poisoned communities.” And as my colleague Robinson Meyer has written, “if your biggest issue is that the United States should aim to rapidly reduce its emissions of heat-trapping pollution, then you probably shouldn’t vote” for the Republican presidential ticket.

Additionally, lurking behind the RNC platform and headliner speeches looms the specter of Project 2025, which, among other things, endorses axing the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office and its $400 billion lending authority to help clean energy technologies that are potentially too risky for traditional lenders. Trump has (unconvincingly, to some) aimed to distance himself from the document, and Reams told me, “Just because some of Trump’s advisors created it doesn’t mean that it’s going to be accepted.”

Still, while Reams was pleased with the receptivity to clean energy she found on the ground at the RNC, she wasn’t entirely without apprehensions. “Where it can be a little bit harder for us is thinking about government spending — the tax credits and protecting those tax credits, appropriations for the Department of Energy and offices like the [Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy], or clean grid initiatives — that I think are going to be a little bit of a tougher sell to Republicans. We have our work cut out for us there,” she told me. “But there are so many other House Republicans who totally get it today.”

The RNC headliners did hit some of the right notes for the all-of-the-abovers; Harrell, of ClearPath, was particularly excited about Vance’s speech emphasizing investment in the U.S. supply chain to reduce reliance on foreign adversaries. This, he told me, would lead to “investment in clean clean energy and clean assets across the country.”

By design, political conventions are a kind of Rorschach test, so that the conversation (or lack thereof) that so alarmed the climate left this week might be, in the eyes of others, an encouraging sign of ideological progress. In 2016, the last in-person Republican convention, clean energy “was tough to talk about,” Reams told me. Of this past week, she said, “I can say nothing but positive things.”