Climate and Energy Policy and the 2020 Election

Economy-Wide

Accelerate Unionization in the Energy Sector 

Unions have a heavy presence in the oil, gas, coal, and auto industries, along with steel, chemicals, and other manufacturing sectors, particularly in the Midwest. It's critical to show working families that they will have access to good, well-paying, safe jobs in any move to address climate change.

Issue It Solves: Helps mobilize key voting groups in union-heavy areas, especially Michigan, but also Western Pennsylvania, and parts of Wisconsin that are often wary of climate actions they perceive as hurting their sectors.

Plan: It’s crucial for unions to see themselves integrated into the development of our clean energy future. Funding for union-led apprenticeships, training, and certificate programs in clean energy will support good-paying jobs that equally value labor and the environment.¹

Increased Innovation Funding with Clear Goals

Innovation funding provides a clear indication of a candidate’s commitment to using every solution to address climate change and getting money directly to the states and communities.²

Issue It Solves: Energy innovation funding has broad support: Eighty-six percent of voters (and 96% of Democrats) support funding more research into renewable energy,³ and 71% of US adults think it’s likely that technological advances can reduce most of the negative effects of climate change.⁴ This funding was a key focus of the Obama administration and remains a top priority among both House and Senate Democrats. Clean energy R&D also featured heavily in the climate platforms of 2020 presidential candidates, including Inslee, Elizabeth Warren, and Mayor Pete Buttigieg⁵

Plan: Where possible, put dollar figures on proposals the candidate already supports that have not yet been scored in the plan and on additional policies the campaign adopts. Emphasize that such clean energy spending can create jobs for all workers, including new and existing union members.⁶

Create a Climate, Conservation, and Resilience Corps

The goal of the original Civilian Conservation Corps was to put Americans to work in a time of widespread unemployment. Today’s voters face a similarly bleak job market, so consider proposing a new body focused on climate, conservation, and resilience. This could galvanize younger voters in particular. Warren and Sanders both proposed a reinstated, modern Civilian Conservation Corps;⁷ Inslee called for a Climate Conservation Corps.⁸

Issue It Solves: In its assessment of the leading Democratic candidate plans, the Sunrise Movement has flagged what it says is “a distinct lack of explanation on how investment will be distributed” to state and local governments and how the administration would help them. A corps would have direct local benefits; the candidate could discuss the types of local jobs and redevelopment a Corps would support in a given community (e.g. nearby brownfield redevelopment, coastal or wetland restoration, home lead removal, and tree planting).

Plan: Support a federal program that would employ thousands of unemployed Americans seeking work and pay for their housing and living expenses as they protect American landscapes and build resilient infrastructure for future generations. The program should focus on hiring in communities in or near the jobs the corps supports and should ensure that people of color benefit from this initiative.

Reduction in Non-GHG Pollutants

Before the pandemic struck, tens of thousands of Americans were already dying annually from air pollution.⁹ The pandemic has laid bare exactly how pollution can drive up vulnerabilities, particularly in communities of color. Focusing on reducing non-greenhouse gas air pollutants is a win-win among younger voters, suburban women, and voters of color.

Issue It Solves: Communities of color have long been under-represented on climate and environmental issues. The Sunrise Movement has docked candidates for not mentioning reductions of emissions beyond greenhouse gases.¹⁰

Plan: This is an issue Democrats have long led on. For example, Vice President Biden could point to his own record of legislative action on pollution but could go further, calling for stricter emissions standards on each of the criteria air pollutants regulated by the EPA.¹¹

Environmental Justice

While most campaigns now make at least some mention of environmental justice, there’s risk involved if this reference does not include much detail on EJ issues. This is even more critical amid the pandemic.

Issue It Solves:  Talking candidly about the need to combat environmental injustice is an opportunity to shore up support with communities of color and poorer communities, who have historically borne the brunt of air, water, and land pollution.

• Pennsylvania: 12.2% in poverty, 23.9% of residents are of color
• Wisconsin: 11.0% in poverty, 18.9% of residents are of color
• Michigan: 14.1% in poverty, 25.1% of residents are of color
• Florida: 13.6% in poverty, 46.5% of residents are of color
• North Carolina: 14.0% in poverty, 37.2% of residents are of color
• Arizona: 14.0% in poverty, 45.6% of residents are of color¹²

The Sunrise Movement has also placed real importance on environmental justice and asked the campaign to place more emphasis on this.¹³

Plan: Campaigns should consider holding virtual environmental justice events, with a star list of speakers and participants. And they should support funding for EJ projects and pledge other changes, like taking the EPA’s EJ office back out of the administrator’s office. They also should announce support for an idea out of Greenpeace, for the creation of “a national Worker and Community Protection Fund to support fossil fuel workers, their families, and impacted communities in the current oil industry contraction and long-term energy transition.”¹⁴

Set an Ambitious 10-Year Goal

Addressing the climate crisis is a real opportunity to create many new jobs and businesses and improve our quality of life. Making our economy more resilient against the impacts of climate change will require us to train workers in new careers and make investments in all clean energy technologies, so that our energy transition protects our most vulnerable citizens.

Issue It Solves: Multiple groups are calling for this.¹⁵ This is a way to address environmentalists’ position that there’s “no ‘middle of the road’ approach to a crisis” and that we need to make up for lost time, so adopting this goal would earn goodwill with those who want strong, immediate, sustained action.¹⁶

Plan: A 10-year goal can lay out reachable stretch goals for emissions reductions and technological advancements across the power, transportation, industrial, building, and agricultural sectors, along with policy plans for how to realize those goals.

Power Sector

Clean Electricity Standard

As electricity meets an increasing proportion of our energy needs, our consumption could increase from between 60% to 110% by 2050.¹⁷ A CES is a cornerstone of the Inslee plan (though he backs a faster 2035 timeline) and fits neatly into a zero by 50 target.¹⁸

Issue It Solves: Third Way polling has found that a clean energy transition is more popular among Democrats than a renewable-only transition.¹⁹ It’s also grounded in facts – a renewables-only transition is nearly impossible – and it won’t alienate voters rely on oil, gas, or heavy industry, which is the case in the Blue Wall States. Pennsylvania already has a clean electricity standard that supports some non-renewable clean technologies, while North Carolina, Arizona, and Michigan have renewable standards, but their utilities have adopted a CES. Wisconsin has a renewables standard. Only Florida has neither.²⁰

Plan: We need to make sure that new power comes from clean energy. 0x50 provides sufficient flexibility in how we would reduce emissions.

Transportation

Buyback or Trade-In of Gas-Powered Vehicles

Auto workers and dealerships are struggling to make ends meet amid a pandemic that has decimated car sales. A buyback policy would promote both new auto sales and the American workers who can manufacture the clean vehicles to be traded.

Issue It Solves: The Warren, Sanders, and Inslee plans included a buyback or trade-in program for gas-powered vehicles.²¹ This helps ensure that people in rural areas, where fleet electrification and public transit are more scarce, feel included in a transitioning transportation sector.²²

Plan: Schumer’s Clean Cars for America proposal would provide a cash voucher to Americans to trade in their gas-powered cars for clean vehicles.²³

Domestic Manufacturing of EVs

The UAW knows it’s well-positioned to keep active in an electrified transportation sector but recognizes we need “strong, forward-looking industrial policy” to do so.²⁴ That starts by ensuring the EV auto market stays at home, not in China or Europe.

Issue It Solves: Broadens support in auto union households and builds on UAW’s endorsement. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 188,000 people work in the auto industry in Michigan, along with 39,000 in Pennsylvania, 38,100 in North Carolina, and 25,800 in Wisconsin.²⁵

Plan: Trump excluded the UAW from his “economic reopening” advisory group.²⁶ In contrast, Democrats would help re-tool existing factories and build new ones to make the US a clean vehicle hub of the future.²⁷

General

Make Climate a Tangible Day-One Priority

Go a step beyond identifying the day-one climate actions the candidate would take.

Issue It Solves: Environmental groups and younger voters still want the presidential campaign to place a greater emphasis on climate change.²⁸ 84% of Democrats call climate change either a crisis or a major problem, along with 74% of all US adults ages 18-22 – higher than other age demographics.²⁹ In addition, 56% of North Carolina voters want to see a concerted mobilization against climate changesimilar to the federal coronavirus response, including 73% of NC Democrats and 77% of NC African Americans.³⁰

Plan: Seek a commitment from the Democratic congressional leadership to announce publicly that if young voters turn out and deliver both chambers of Congress and the White House to Democrats, climate will be a top priority immediately after inauguration, and by Earth Day 2021, the administration will release a comprehensive climate policy agenda.

The Green New Deal

Republicans want to turn the climate debate fully into part of the culture war by portraying it as a decision between traditional values and an out-of-touch, “socialist” Green New Deal agenda that would further destroy the economy and upend people’s way of life. Unfortunately, the fact that the Green New Deal remains a vaguely defined set of principles has made it easy to be cherry-picked and distorted into something that is politically toxic in the six most competitive swing states. Even supporting the platform solely in principle is politically fraught. For example, Vice President Biden has already rightfully made clear he will not ban fracking, recognizing that the practice supported thousands of direct production jobs and indirect jobs in industries that transport and use the fuel, particularly in Pennsylvania and Michigan. Below is an examination of the Green New Deal elements that campaigns should be most wary of including.

10-12 Years to Full Transition (Net-Zero by 2030)

Scientists in the IPCC have not minced words: We need to reach net-zero climate pollution by 2050 at the latest if we are to contain global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.³¹ That’s the timeline we should stick with to avoid feeding right-wing attacks.³² We can support fast, concerted, lasting climate action up to and beyond 2050, developing all the technologies we still need along the way and making sure we protect jobs throughout the transition. By contrast, committing to net-zero by 2030 would mean (and be portrayed as) getting rid of every gasoline-powered car, truck, and SUV, and forcing enormous costs on every business, manufacturer, and farm to replace anything that runs on fossil fuels or emits a greenhouse gas. While this would raise alarms in the industrial-heavy Midwest, it would also be used to scare suburban voters across Florida, Arizona, and North Carolina who rely on their (predominately gas-powered) SUVs, trucks, and cars for everyday life and particularly now do not want to be forced to buy a new vehicle or pay more for anything.

Politics: Candidates should be aspirational but based firmly in science and recommendations of experts, arguing that we must zero-out our emissions by 2050 to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, but stipulating that hitting even that target will require ambitious action that doesn’t leave workers and jobs hanging in the balance. Telling voters that they can magically wean the US from emissions by 2030 is just selling a dangerous pipedream.

Renewables-Only

The IPCC has made clear that we need every clean energy technology to bring our emissions down to net-zero, including carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy. Moreover, nuclear is critical not only to meeting our clean energy goals but to our national security.

Politics: 74% of Democrats are more likely to support a candidate with a climate plan that includes nuclear and carbon capture alongside renewables; only 14% would be less likely to do so.³³ Inslee is “supportive of” ongoing nuclear research, though he wants to see improvements to the technology – improvements that are being worked out right now.³⁴ Candidates can credibly state that those who oppose nuclear are “not serious” about fighting climate change.³⁵ Labor unions, whose members help build, operate, and maintain reactors, support a strong nuclear industry. Nuclear power is still prevalent in several swing states, including Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Michigan. American fossil fuel workers see carbon capture as a technology that supports a viable future for their industry.

The End of Fossil Fuels

We clearly need to accelerate the reduction of our reliance on fossil fuels, as evidenced by the growing economic devastation to oil-dependent regions caused by the decline of oil prices. But rather than promising to magically end the use of oil and gas, candidates should focus instead on creating new opportunities for the workers and communities impacted by oil and gas price changes.

Politics: Fossil fuel production, refining, and use remains a critical part of virtually every part of the economy. It is more heavily unionized than many other sectors and underpins employment, particularly in Pennsylvania (natural gas and manufacturing), Michigan (auto manufacturing, agriculture, and petrochemicals) Wisconsin (agriculture and manufacturing), and Florida (tourism, agriculture, and transportation), among many others. While we need to move away from our over-reliance on fossil fuels, doing it abruptly through a ban or explicit effort to end their use – especially during the economic crisis and collapse in oil prices that have contributed to the loss of almost 51,000 drilling and refining jobs in March – would send panic through communities and unions that currently do not see any alternative way to keep employment and industries alive. This was a challenge before the COVID19-induced financial crisis and is even more problematic with so many people out of work.

Other

New Pipeline Construction Ban

There’s an environmentalist perception that “The more pipelines we build, the more import-export terminals we build, the more we lock ourselves into greenhouse gases for decades.”³⁶ But pipelines that could carry clean fuels, like hydrogen or ammonia, are a key part of our clean energy future. Pipeline construction directly supports a wide range of jobs – including many union jobs, depending on the project developer and location. Pipeline projects also support jobs in manufacturing, engineering, surveying, and service work.³⁷ By one estimate, every mile of natural gas transmission pipeline built creates 57.9 domestic jobs across the economy.³⁸ Several top unions are supportive of pipeline projects.³⁹

Politics: Pipeline projects offer good-paying jobs. That’s true for both traditional pipelines and “pipelines of the future,” or ones that transport clean fuels or captured carbon. Candidates can pledge to reverse or fight the Trump administration’s NEPA rollbacks and require a review of the climate impact of proposed infrastructure projects, as well as the concerns of impacted communities and vulnerable groups. But candidates should avoid pledging to stop all new pipeline construction.