Tuesday night’s debate highlighted the energy battle plans of former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris heading into November — and misleading and false claims circulating on the campaign trail.
Trump, for example, claimed that Harris would end hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in Pennsylvania on Day 1 of a new administration, even though a president can’t unilaterally do that. Harris, meanwhile, claimed she clearly stated in 2020 that she didn’t want to ban fracking, when in reality she said President Joe Biden would not ban the practice at the time.
Trump also revived arguments around pipelines that are likely foreign to many voters, such as a false claim that Biden approved a European pipeline known as Nord Stream 2.
A chief takeaway from the debate in Philadelphia at the National Constitution Center was Harris’ full-throated support for U.S. oil and gas production, which prompted rebukes from some climate groups.
She said she helped to open “new leases for fracking” with her tie-breaking vote to pass the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, a bill which mandated new fossil fuel leases despite its label as the most consequential climate legislation in U.S. history. Harris touted record domestic oil production and said the U.S. needs “diverse sources of energy so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil.”
Here are five fact checks on energy claims made during the debate and what the arguments signal for the campaign ahead:
How much space do solar panels use?
Trump is known for making attacks on the wind industry, but on Tuesday, he targeted solar power when discussing Harris’ views on fracking. If Harris is elected, Trump claimed, “We’ll go back to windmills, and we’ll go back to solar, where they need a whole desert to get some energy to come out. You ever see a solar plant?”
“By the way, I’m a big fan of solar, but they take 400, 500 acres of desert soil,” Trump added.
Trump’s point is partially true.
While there are no solar farms that takes up an entire desert ecosystem, utility-scale ones can take up hundreds and sometimes thousands of acres. It takes about five to seven acres to generate one megawatt of power, according to data from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).
For example, Pennsylvania’s largest-ever solar farm came online last week in the south-central part of the state near the Maryland border. It spans about 1,300 acres of private land across two fields, large enough to power the equivalent of 38,060 homes, according to project developer AES Corp.
What is expected to be the nation’s largest solar and storage site in the U.S. is being built in Kern County, California on 8,300 acres of private land.
Project developer AES says that, once completed, the project will generate 1,000 megawatts of power, enough to power almost half a million homes.
While these solar areas may seem large, they are small when compared to total land used by other sectors, said Morgan Lyons, a spokesperson for SEIA, a leading industry group.
“All utility-scale solar operating today takes up less than 600,000 acres,” said Lyons. “This compares with over 2.2 million acres in the U.S. currently used for golf courses.”
Most golf courses apply pesticides and fertilizers that pollute local waterways, according to dozens of scientific studies, whereas most solar sites don’t need chemical treatments and therefore improve soil health, according to SEIA’s reports. Many solar companies are using sheep herds to manage vegetation — instead of lawnmowers — to lessen their environmental footprint.
In his comments, Trump honed in on desert landscapes, suggesting large solar plants are not good for the environment. But that suggestion is misleading, if recent research is a guide.
While some research has found that projects could kill or harm animals such as Mojave desert tortoises, the effects of utility-scale solar on desert species are still not well known — at least not in the U.S. Southwest, according to a new study published by researchers with the U.S. Geological Service.
The study found that how desert wildlife respond to solar arrays depends on where the farm is built, the construction methods used, and whether mitigation measures are followed, such as building around threatened plant species.
In some cases, solar may help wildlife. A study from a utility-scale solar farm in Minnesota found that insect biodiversity at the site actually increased, including a twentyfold increase in the number of native bees.
When asked for further analysis, the Trump campaign pointed to an op-ed by nuclear power advocate Michael Shellenberger that contained claims debunked by scientists about working solar panels leeching toxins.
Did the IRA allow more fracking?
On Tuesday, Harris said she “was the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which opened new leases for fracking.”
During the IRA negotiations on Capitol Hill in 2022, Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) insisted the legislation force the Department of Interior to offer oil and gas companies new leases before the Interior Department can permit major new renewable projects.
On top of annual offshore lease sales, the legislation requires onshore oil and gas lease sales in the four-month period that precedes the department’s issuance of a “right-of-way,” or permit, for wind or solar energy development on public lands. Interior also has to offer two million onshore acres for oil and gas leases in the year that precedes the issuance of wind and solar permits, according to the law.
The IRA language effectively ties renewable energy development in the U.S. to fossil fuel production. Because fracking occurs with a significant amount of onshore production, the law facilitates the drilling practice, as Harris claims.
In 2023 and 2024, Interior offered oil and gas leases in Montana and the Dakotas, Nevada, New Mexico and eastern states like Mississippi. A lease sale is taking place later this month in Colorado. No offshore lease sales are scheduled this year.
But since fossil fuel production takes years to develop following a lease sale, Harris’ IRA vote did not directly facilitate the record fossil fuel production taking place right now in the U.S.
The oil and gas industry supported the leasing language, which it said was necessary because the Biden administration was refusing to hold lease sales. The industry opposed many other parts of the law, such as a fee on methane emissions.
Last week, Mike Sommers, president of the American Petroleum Institute, an influential lobbying group representing the oil and gas industry, requested a meeting with Harris to discuss a “shared commitment to addressing the persistently high rate of inflation on the American people and the energy security challenges facing the nation.”
“Our industry stands ready to work with you and your team on a sustained vision for U.S. energy leadership,” said Sommers in the letter.
The Harris campaign did not respond to the letter, according to an API spokesperson. The Harris campaign and the White House also did not comment on this story.
The IRA also increased royalties and other fees for fossil fuel production and halted noncompetitive leasing.
Many environmentalists say fracking, which involves injecting substances in the ground to free up reserves in complex rock formations, can contaminate groundwater and harm wildlife.
What actually happened with Nord Stream 2?
Trump revived a talking point from 2021 during the debate contrasting Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline with his handling of a planned Russian gas pipeline.
Biden canceled the cross-border permit for Keystone XL, which would have delivered crude from Canada to U.S. refineries, early in his term. Keystone was supported by the U.S. oil and gas industry and Trump but opposed by climate activists.
Biden’s handling of the Russian pipeline, Nord Stream 2, was more nuanced and involved helping a key U.S. ally — Germany, which wanted more Russian natural gas. The 767-mile pipeline was to run approximately 760 miles through the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany.
While president, Trump had imposed sanctions on companies working on Nord Stream 2, a move sought by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and other Republicans who said the pipeline would give Russia too much influence over European energy markets and possibly crowd out sales of U.S. LNG exports.
“Why does Biden go in and kill the Keystone pipeline and approve the single biggest deal that Russia’s ever made, Nord Stream 2?” Trump said Tuesday night.
But Biden didn’t “approve” the Russian project. Germany pushed Biden to lift the sanctions when he took over, and the president agreed.
The German government later turned against Nord Stream 2 in the runup to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, freezing its approval before gas ever flowed. Biden, who had otherwise been highly critical of Russia, welcomed the move, despite the earlier lifting of sanctions.
Months later, Nord Stream 2 was destroyed by a bomb. By then, Biden was promoting U.S. gas exports as a way for Europe to replace Russian supply.
How much Trump’s arguments on the two pipelines might sway voters is unclear, but University of Houston energy economist Ed Hirs said he didn’t think the issue is “a plus or a minus” for the former president, considering the complicated twists and turns surrounding both projects. For one thing, he said, “if Keystone was so great, why didn’t Trump get it done?”
“Trump had four years to push it through,” he said. “He could have done it with a pen stroke.”
Could U.S. oil production be four to five times higher now if Trump was in office?
Almost certainly not.
If Harris wins the presidential race, “the day after that election, they’ll go back to destroying our country, and oil will be dead, fossil fuel will be dead,” Trump said Tuesday evening. He also claimed that Harris would end fracking in Pennsylvania — something she said isn’t true, despite her past support for a fracking ban.
Trump’s proclamation that oil output would be “four times, five times higher” after the past three and a half years isn’t backed up by industry experts.
In its annual energy outlook in 2022, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said fossil fuel production, including oil, will remain at “historically high levels through 2050.” In last year’s analysis, EIA said “U.S. petroleum and other liquids production remains high” due to increased exports of finished products.
Analysts also waived off Trump’s assertion, noting that the United States is already setting record levels of oil output and is the world’s top producer.
Trump’s claim is “nonsense,” said Oren Pilant, an energy analyst at East Daley Analytics, a company that monitors operational risk across the oil and gas industry, via email.
“Generally, the administration [in the White House] does not have a significant impact on [oil and gas] production, which is better understood as a supply and demand function,” Pilant said.
When asked, the Trump campaign did not explain how his administration would have realized a larger surge in domestic oil production in recent years.
U.S. oil production reached a peak of 12.8 million barrels per day in January 2020, according to EIA, but fell as the Covid-19 pandemic cut demand and operators shut in wells. Production of U.S. crude averaged 11.3 million barrels a day in 2020, EIA said.
Production has grown under the Biden administration, even as his administration has rolled out regulations that aim to crack down on greenhouse gas emissions from the industry.
Today, the United States is the world’s largest producer of crude. In EIA’s latest short-term energy outlook, the agency estimated that daily domestic production is slated to climb by three percent from 2024 to 2025, from 13.3 million barrels to 13.7 million barrels.
By comparison, OPEC, the oil cartel, produced an average of more than 26 million barrels per day in August, according to the organization’s most recent monthly report. OPEC currently has a total of 12 member countries.
If U.S. oil production were to be four to five times current levels, the country on its own would be turning out more oil than all of OPEC, said Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates. He called that “unlikely.”
Lipow said any administration can influence oil production through regulations, which can make it easier or more difficult to extract oil from the ground.
A decision to lease more public land for oil drilling also might not show up in production statistics for years — though such actions can affect production over time.
Still, Seth Gladstone, public relations director at the group Food & Water Watch, said the idea of drilling for four to five times more oil than the country does today is “an absurdity for any number of reasons.”
“Among them are the fact that this country has nothing close to the infrastructure necessary to accommodate that level of production — and this is a good thing, because any increase in current fossil fuel production would have grave implications for our climate,” he said.
What was Harris’ 2020 view on fracking?
When she was running for president in 2019, Harris told CNN “there’s no question” that she would ban fracking if she won the election. She now says she wouldn’t. Even though the president can’t unilaterally ban fracking, it’s a clear reversal.
Tuesday night she said the switch came four years ago, not a few weeks ago when she replaced Biden at the top of the ticket.
“I made that very clear in 2020. I will not ban fracking,” Harris said on the debate stage Tuesday.
But her comments in 2020 referred to Biden, not herself.
During the 2020 vice presidential debate, after becoming Biden’s running mate, she said, “Joe Biden will not ban fracking.” In answering that question, she didn’t fully resolve her previous position. She just said it didn’t matter anymore.
Since she replaced Biden on the ticket, she’s said that her values have not changed when asked about fracking.
As to why she shifted on the issue, she told CNN, “What I have seen is that we can grow, and we can increase a clean energy economy without banning fracking.” She has not expanded on how her energy policies would differ from Biden’s.
The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment on the timing.
