Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump will meet Tuesday for their first debate, and there’s a good chance their energy and environmental agendas will come up.
The pressure will be on both candidates at the matchup in Philadelphia in the closely fought race for president. Their answers could illuminate their plans for office while highlighting stark differences between the two.
Harris, who became the Democratic nominee after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race in July, has thus far said little about energy and climate change on the trail, apart from promising to defend Biden’s agenda like the landmark climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act. She did release a broad policy platform Monday, but it’s light on specifics.
Harris has flipped on several key energy and climate policy positions she had in 2019, including on whether she’d support a ban on hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas.
Trump, meanwhile, has vowed to roll back Biden’s climate policies and significantly boost fossil fuel production, even though oil and natural gas production has soared to record levels since Biden took office.
“The first thing I will do to make middle-class life dramatically more affordable is to end Kamala’s war on American energy, terminate her Green New Scam and drill, baby, drill,” Trump said in a Potterville, Michigan, speech in late August.
“We have more liquid gold than Saudi Arabia. We have more than Russia. And we were going to use it,” he continued, referring to oil.
Environmental groups last week pushed the ABC News moderators to ask the candidates about their climate change and clean energy plans, arguing it would “help voters learn more about both candidates’ plans to address climate change, lower energy costs for the middle class and take our country forward.”
The debate is likely to be the last of this election, since the candidates have not agreed to another. Vice presidential contenders Tim Walz and JD Vance are slated to debate Oct. 1.
Fracking, fracking, fracking
Fracking has already become a top policy issue in the election, and it could get even bigger play on the debate stage.
The oil and natural gas recovery process is behind the massive growth in production in the last 15 years. And no state has seen a boom quite like Pennsylvania, which has emerged as one of the most important swing states in the 2024 race.
A key issue is Harris’ endorsement in 2019 of a nationwide ban on fracking. A president likely couldn’t impose a blanket ban, though could float regulations to stymie fracking. The Biden administration has not sought to impose any restrictions on fracking thus far.
Within days of Biden’s dropout, Harris’ campaign said she no longer supported a fracking ban. And she doubled down in an CNN interview last month, citing the IRA as proof that the nation can boost clean energy without banning fracking, a stance that received muted applause from the fossil fuel industry.
But Trump and his allies are still looking to make it a liability for Harris, and he may use the debate to that end.
“She was a non-fracker, no fracking under any circumstances,” he said at another Pennsylvania rally, claiming she had said “like 100 times” that she wants to ban it.
“There will be no fracking if she’s elected in Pennsylvania or anywhere else. You’ll have energy that will go up three, four, five times,” he continued.
Harris’ other flip-flops
Fracking isn’t the only area where Harris’ position has changed since 2019, and Trump could try to use those in the debate.
She’s a former Green New Deal supporter but no longer talks about it. She co-sponsored a 2019 bill that would mandate all zero-emissions vehicle sales by 2040 and 50 percent by 2030 but now says she doesn’t back an electric vehicle mandate.
Trump and his supporters have been highlighting these policy switches and argue that she still supports such progressive policies, pointing to statements like the CNN interview, where she said, “My values have not changed.” He aired a video highlighting her former positions on the Green New Deal, fracking, “Medicare for All” and more at a recent rally.
“That’s her, and she can’t do anything about it, because that’s where she is,” he said. “With a politician, when they come out with something, that’s where they end up.”
Drill, baby, drill
Trump has repeatedly promised to “unleash” U.S. oil and natural gas and to “drill, baby, drill.” He presents it as part of his plan to reduce energy costs and has pledged to make the U.S. have the lowest electricity prices of any industrialized nation.
How he would achieve that latter goal is unclear — such prices are typically dependent on several factors, including state regulatory decisions.
The former president has also promised a wholesale rollback of Biden’s environmental agenda and said he would sign an order on his first day in office to begin that process.
“I will be the American energy president,” Trump said in Michigan last week in rolling out his plan to declare a state of emergency on energy to enable more energy production and generation. He has not specified which authorities the declaration would unlock, though the debate could provide him an opportunity to do so.
“Starting on day one, I will approve new drilling, new pipelines, new refineries, new power plants, new reactors. And we will slash the red tape,” he said. “We will get the job done. We will create more electricity, also, for these new industries that can only function with massive electricity. And we’ll get it done.”
Trump said that under his presidency, “America’s future will be energy abundance, energy independence. And soon we will be energy dominant.”
For Harris, the debate presents an opportunity to highlight Trump’s promises and motivations. Democrats and their allies have throughout the election cycle brought up Trump’s behind-closed-doors request from oil industry leaders to contribute $1 billion toward electing him and his promises to carry out their priorities.
But Harris could also choose to boast about domestic oil and gas output since she and Biden took office. In his lone debate before dropping out, Biden did not point to that part of his record.
Production has increased since 2021 and keeps setting records; the U.S. is now the largest producer of oil and gas in the world and throughout history.
Harris’ campaign has been talking up that increased production in response to questions about her new fracking stance. It says she is proud of the growth in oil and gas, even while she’s seeking to supplant it with clean energy.
Project 2025
Harris and her allies have put significant efforts into tying Trump to Project 2025 and using it against him. The plan by the Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups is meant as a policy playbook for the next Republican administration, but Trump has tried to distance himself from it.
It suggests repealing numerous climate and clean energy regulations, refocusing climate efforts to focus instead on boosting energy production, cutting back the federal government’s climate change science work and firing federal government workers en masse, among other proposals.
“If Donald Trump gets back into the White House, he’s going to fire civil servants like intelligence officers, engineers and even federal prosecutors if he decides that they don’t serve his personal agenda,” Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow said at the Democratic National Convention last month.
“They’re talking about replacing the entire federal government with an army of loyalists who answer only to Donald Trump,” she continued.
Trump has partially disavowed Project 2025, saying that although he may agree or disagree with parts of it, he wasn’t involved in writing it and doesn’t know the people who were. Many of the known authors were political appointees in his administration.
Democrats see Project 2025 as extremely unpopular and are likely to keep trying to attach Trump to it.
This story also appears in Climatewire.
