Climate-forward Democrats win tight races in battleground states

Sustainability

The Big Story

Climate-forward Democrats win tight races in battleground states

Last week’s Republican sweep of the presidency and Congress concealed a bright spot for Democrats anxious about planetary heating: In three battleground states, climate-hawk Democrats won tough races.

Those wins counter emerging narratives from the U.S. petroleum industry that Trump’s sweep of these battlegrounds gives Republicans a mandate to move against Biden administration climate regulations and subsidies.

It also runs counter to the strategy followed at the top of the ticket by Vice President Harris, who backed away from climate messaging and espoused support for fracking in a vain attempt to win Pennsylvania.

In Arizona, Ruben Gallego won by 3 points in a campaign focused on expanding the state’s gains from federal clean energy investments like the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) — plans his opponent, Kari Lake, pledged to repeal.

Meanwhile, in Nevada, incumbent Sen. Jacky Rosen — who ran ads touting a clean-energy future built on lithium mined in the state — fended off challenger Sam Brown with an additional 0.6 percent of the vote. Brown’s campaign was supported by Americans for Prosperity, part of the conservative network owned by petrochemical magnates Charles and David Koch, which accused Rosen of wasting a trillion on the IRA.

And in Michigan, Elissa Slotkin won the Senate race with a razor thin 0.3 percent margin after campaigning on her support for the IRA — defeating a campaign by Republican Mike Rogers, who ran ads falsely claiming the state would see nearly half a million job losses under the electric vehicle (EV) revolution, according to Politifact and The Detroit News.

In an election determined in part by concerns over the economy, clean energy can mean something much more immediate than a safer climate: A job. According to an analysis by advocacy group Climate Power, clean energy projects supported by the IRA have created 21,000 new jobs in Michigan, 20,000 in Nevada and 18,000 in Arizona.

To put that another way: Slotkin won in Michigan by a margin roughly equivalent to the number of new jobs the IRA had created, and Rosen by just 3,000 more votes than the number of new cleantech jobs in her state.

That’s a connection that Slotkin, in her campaign, made explicitly.

“If the fundamental question is 'Who do we want to make that next generation of vehicles?' you better believe I want that to be Michigan, not China,” she said, according to the Detroit News.

Welcome to The Hill’s Sustainability newsletter, I'm Saul Elbein — every week we follow the latest moves in the growing battle over sustainability in the U.S. and around the world.

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Emissions

US emissions decreasing amid global rise

The U.S. broadly reduced emissions of planet-heating chemicals between 2005 and 2022, according to findings published Wednesday by Environment America.

Greenhouse gas emissions fell by 15 percent over that period — a fall largely driven by retiring coal plants, but offset by rising oil and gas production and growing levels of per-capita fossil fuel use in states like Louisiana and Alaska.

Those findings track reporting released Monday by the Global Carbon Budget, that found U.S. emissions were on track to be slightly lower (down 0.6 percent) in 2024 than they had been in 2023.

That change tracks a flattening or decrease in other rich world economies, like China and the EU — a change that is, however, offset by the continued growth of emissions across the rest of the world.

But the report suggests that the policies that led to current reductions — largely Obama-era federal regulations backing fracking and pushing utilities to replace coal with cleaner-burning gas — have largely done all they can do and are unlikely to lead to further reductions.

Instead, further reductions will require states to tackle harder problems, the researchers found.

These include replacing gas-powered cars with non-polluting options, from biking to EVs; changing gas out for solutions like solar and batteries; improving energy efficiency so far less emissions are needed per unit of useful power and transition industrial facilities like steel mills to electric or hydrogen-based heat.

On Our Radar

Upcoming news themes and events we're watching:

Texas legislators have begun to fill the state’s legislative docket with a deluge of new bills as the state — the nation’s leading fossil fuel producer but also a wind energy powerhouse — prepared for its biennial session, which will coincide with the first 100 days of the second Trump term.
Delegates at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan (COP29) are struggling to determine what Trump’s sweeping victory last week will mean for the global effort to slow and then reverse the implacable pace of planetary heating and extreme weather.

In Other News

Branch out with different reads from The Hill:

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California air regulators approve controversial standards that could affect gas prices

California regulators have approved plans to strengthen the state’s carbon reduction standards — a move that opponents fear could drive up gasoline prices.

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Around The Nation

Local and state headlines on sustainability issues:

How will offshore wind fare under a second Trump term? (Canary)
'Praying for rain': How New York farmers are dealing with drought — and unexpected brush fires (Grist)
In a Parched US, Human-Triggered Wildfires Are Poised to Thrive (Inside Climate News)

What We're Reading

Sustainability news we've flagged from other outlets:

COP29 Climate Talks Focus on Financing (The New York Times)
Countries Are Pledging Money They Don’t Control at COP29 (Bloomberg)
Exxon CEO says Trump should keep U.S. involved in global effort to address climate change (CNBC)