It’s all happening. The presidential election is a week away, and our cohost Jesse Jenkins is back from vacation. There is so much to talk about in the world of decarbonization and energy. So we tried to catch up on all of it. Are EV sales starting to rebound in the U.S.? What’s up with the Cybertruck? And what about Senator Joe Manchin’s permitting reform bill?
On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Jesse and Rob attempt to discuss all those questions and more. Peak oil demand — the IRA’s focus on manufacturing — the emerging political economy of decarbonization — we hit it all. Or we try to, at least. Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University.
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Here is an excerpt from our conversation:
Robinson Meyer: I want to do a branching pass here for a second. If Trump wins and Republicans want to pass [the Manchin-Barrasso permitting] bill, I think Democrats should take them up on it. Because all the changes to the oil and gas regime — almost all the changes to the oil and gas permitting regime that are contemplated by the bill will be done by a Trump administration. They could be done through executive action, or through a helpful Congress in a Trump administration. But the transmission stuff can’t be. So you might as well take the transmission tailwind and then just do the stuff that a Trump administration can do anyway.
To be clear here, when you talk to the modelers — not Jesse, other modelers — they say that the expansion oil and gas that happened during Trump would dwarf any sense of the changes contemplated by the bill. If Harris wins, then I think we have the real conversation about whether this bill makes sense for Democrats. But if Trump wins, I think, number one, Republicans aren’t going to be interested in passing the bill. But if they are interested, Democrats should take them up on it.
Jesse Jenkins: Yeah, so you have kind of a narrow range of circumstances where this bill might be considered seriously in a lame duck, right? I think you’re right that if Trump wins somehow they’re going to offer it, Republicans are going to offer it, that’s an interesting deal for Democrats. I just don’t think that’s too likely.
I think the most likely scenario where this bill is taken seriously is if Harris wins and if the House and Senate are split. Whether they flip sides or whatever the control looks like, going forward, if the Democrats have the House and the Republicans have the Senate, or vice versa, this could be the type of bipartisan bill that is sort of the best deal on the table that, that might be able to get through regular order — that’s, this bill would require 60 votes to get past the filibuster in the Senate.
So you know, it by nature has to be bipartisan. And by definition, at this stage, a bipartisan bill is going to have some things that climate advocates really don’t like. And if it has enough that outweighs that, that’ll be the serious question.
This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …
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Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.
