I’ve not had the stomach to watch any of the ongoing Republican Convention in Wisconsin, but I have collected a sampling of tidbits documenting the climate and energy positions of VP nominee JD Vance.
I’m starting above with Trae Crowder, the Liberal Redneck, who, it turns out, actually has some history with Vance…
New York Times Climate Forward (subs only):
…as recently as 2020, Vance said in a speech at Ohio State University that “we have a climate problem in our society.” He praised solar energy and he called natural gas an improvement over dirtier forms of energy, but not “the sort of thing that’s gonna take us to a clean energy future.”
But many of his public opinions have changed. His position on global warming is one of them, Lisa reported.
Both Trump and the oil and gas industry backed Vance for his 2022 Senate campaign. Now, like Trump, Vance strongly supports fossil fuel use and opposes renewable energy and electric vehicles.
He has also said climate change is not a threat, a position that President Biden highlighted when he criticized Vance in an interview on Monday night with the NBC News anchor Lester Holt.
As a senator, Vance has repeatedly assailed the Inflation Reduction Act, the 2022 law that has become the centerpiece of Biden’s climate agenda.
He was also a sponsor of legislation to repeal an I.R.A. program devised to curb leaks of methane, and also of a bill to undo an Environmental Protection Agency rule setting strict emissions standards for cars and light trucks.
Vance introduced legislation to repeal federal tax credits for electric vehicles that were created under the I.R.A., even though his state has seen $12 billion in clean energy investment since the law passed, including for electric vehicle manufacturing.
None of those measures supported by Vance have become law.
The oil and gas industry’s investment in Sen. J.D. Vance seems to be paying off.
Vance has championed fracking and railed against clean energy since joining the Senate in 2023, after a campaign partly bankrolled by fossil fuel companies, write Heather Richards, Mike Soraghan and Brian Dabbs. Now, the Ohio Republican is a vice presidential candidate, joining Donald Trump in his calls to “drill, baby, drill.”
Trump’s selection of Vance as his running mate could help the former president’s prospects in Pennsylvania, a swing state that is one of the country’s largest energy producers. His home state of Ohio has similarly gained economically from the fracking boom, benefiting the oil and petrochemical industries.
Vance is “somebody who understands kind of what we do and how we do it,” Ohio Oil and Gas Association spokesperson Mike Chadsey told POLITICO’s E&E News.
“He’s gonna continue to be an advocate for the industry, and energy investment, helping make sure that those issues stay at the forefront,” Chadsey said.
But Vance wasn’t always a stalwart supporter of oil and gas — or Trump. Vance once used words like “Hilter” and “idiot” to describe Trump. And as recently as 2020, he spoke at Ohio State University about society’s “climate problem” and said using natural gas as a power source “isn’t exactly the sort of thing that’s gonna take us to a clean energy future.”
Last month, J.D. Vance flew to San Francisco to hold a fund-raiser for Donald J. Trump and to host a private dinner afterward with two dozen tech and crypto executives and investors.
The location was the opulent Pacific Heights mansion of David Sacks, an entrepreneur and podcaster whom Mr. Vance had met through the tech investor Peter Thiel. Mr. Vance, now 39 years old, had worked for one of Mr. Thiel’s investment firms in San Francisco in 2016.
During the $300,000-a-person dinner that night, Mr. Trump, seated between Mr. Sacks and another tech investor, Chamath Palihapitiya, informally polled the room about whom to choose as his running mate. Even with another vice-presidential hopeful, Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, in attendance, Mr. Sacks, Mr. Palihapitiya and others all had the same answer: Pick Mr. Vance, they told Mr. Trump, according to two people with knowledge of the exchange.
Mr. Vance, the Ohio senator selected by Mr. Trump this week to be his running mate, spent less than five years in Silicon Valley’s tech industry, where he worked as a junior venture capitalist and a biotech executive. But while he made little mark on the tech scene, it was a formative period that has powered Mr. Vance’s stunning ascent in the Republican Party — and is likely to influence his political future.
Donald Trump’s newly picked running mate, Senator JD Vance, has grown more critical of renewable electricity and climate change even as his home state of Ohio embraced solar power and clean-tech manufacturing.
It’s a contrast that intensified as Vance was campaigning for the Senate — and Trump’s endorsement — in 2022. Now, the former venture capitalist’s approach is drawing fresh scrutiny from critics who say Vance would be a relentless booster of oil and gas at the expense of emission-free energy if he’s elected vice president.
“Donald Trump has chosen an avowed climate denier as his running mate who has used his time in Congress to vote against the environment and shill for fossil fuel corporations at every opportunity,” said Lena Moffitt, executive director of the environmental advocacy group Evergreen Action.
Conservatives see in Vance someone who will fight for fossil fuel workers. Ohio ranks seventh among states for natural gas production — which took off as energy companies tapped the prolific Marcellus and Utica shale formations — and Vance has called for expanding production there.
“Millions of energy workers have been sacrificed at the altar of the green movement, and to have one of their own — someone who knows the struggles of small towns targeted by powerful DC green groups — breathes hope into these struggling communities,” said Daniel Turner, founder of Power the Future, a group that advocates for rural energy communities.
Vance’s pivot on climate and energy issues has been swift. In 2020, he was unequivocal in acknowledging global warming. We “of course have a climate problem in our society,” he told a January 2020 conference in Ohio. At the time, Vance blamed “unrestrained emissions in China” for driving the phenomenon, though he also lamented the slow adoption of carbon-free power in the US. Solar energy is driving big improvements, he said, but it can’t meet all US energy needs.
By 2022, Vance had shifted his approach, questioning whether humans were solely responsible for driving climate change and casting scorn on activists focused on fighting it. In a July 2022 interview on the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, he agreed there wasn’t a climate crisis. In a candidate forum, he derided “ridiculous ugly windmills all over Ohio farms that don’t produce enough electricity to run a cell phone.” And on X, he said Democrats were pushing a “green energy fantasy” in America while China was building coal-fired power plants.
While Vance was emphasizing the limits of renewable energy, his home state was racing to deploy it. In 2023, Ohio bested 45 other states in its installation of solar generating capacity, according to a March tally from the Solar Energy Industries Association. The state’s deployment of 1.3 gigawatts of solar power last year represented a 1,230% increase over 2022, and there’s more to come with 20 utility-scale projects planned.
Ohio, a Rust Belt state with a deep manufacturing history, also has embraced an industrial future increasingly tied to the energy transition. First Solar Inc. is expanding its solar panel manufacturing capacity in the state, with facilities in Perrysburg and Lake Township. And in February, panel production began at Illuminate USA, a factory in central Ohio that’s a joint venture of Chicago-based renewable developer Invenergy LLC and China’s LONGi Green Energy Technology Co.
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Finally, some threads brought together below.