US ELECTIONS: Harris expected to campaign on Biden administration's energy, climate record

Vice President Kamala Harris will inherit the Biden administration's record on energy and climate policy as she looks to secure the Democratic Party's presidential nomination and deny former US President Donald Trump a second term in November.

Harris, who cast the tie-breaking Senate vote on the nearly two-year-old Inflation Reduction Act, quickly became the party's consensus presidential front-runner after President Joe Biden July 21 announced his exit from the race and endorsed his former running mate.

In his announcement, Biden touted the law as "the most significant climate legislation in the history of the world." The legislation included $369 billion in direct spending and tax incentives for energy and climate measures, with bonus tax credits tied to prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements.

More than $123 billion in private investment and at least 105,454 jobs have been announced in 40 states and Puerto Rico since the law was enacted in August 2022, according to a May analysis by the business group E2. Of those investments, 85% have gone to Republican congressional districts, as have 70% of the jobs, the firm found.

"The Biden term has been more climate-forward than people expected, which allows Harris to burnish her progressive credentials by simply staying the course," Steve Piper, director of energy research for S&P Global Commodity Insights, said July 22.

Should Harris be elected, Roger Bernard, senior policy analyst with Commodity Insights, said he anticipated "continuity" at the outset of her term, but added, "I think one of the real keys is going to be whom does she have in her cabinet, because after all, it's going to be her cabinet as opposed to Joe Biden's."

'Her job is to get elected'

On the domestic front, Harris appeared at multiple groundbreakings for projects funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, otherwise known as the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law.

The legislation included the largest single investment in US power grid expansion, enabling the US Department of Energy's newly formed Grid Deployment Office to offer targeted support for riskier new transmission lines.

While there is distance between Harris' prior positions in 2020 and where the Biden administration has landed in its governance, it is unclear how much that might mean for her positions going forward.

"There's no daylight between her positioning on energy and environmental issues after the point at which she joined the Biden-Harris team in 2020," said Scott Segal, co-chair of Bracewell's Policy Resolution Group.

Harris during her 2019-2020 primary campaign supported passage of the Green New Deal, of which she was an early co-sponsor as a US senator from California, and during a 2019 CNN forum on climate change said she would support a ban on hydraulic fracturing.

"[B]ut these are things that she never said again, and ... I would not expect those views to make another appearance," Segal said. "Remember, her job is to get elected by carrying more centrist, Democratic states that are more favorably disposed toward natural gas," he said in an interview.

Following Biden's announcement, the Sierra Club July 21 said it will "marshal its resources and grassroots power to guarantee the Biden-Harris legacy continues."

However, the Sunrise Movement, a leading youth climate advocacy group, said that if it makes an endorsement, it would be after a vote of its members.

"In 2020, she campaigned a progressive platform including the Green New Deal," said Stevie O'Hanlon, a spokesperson for the group. "As AG she prosecuted Exxon for misleading the public about climate change, She called for a ceasefire weeks before Biden. If she runs on that kind of platform, she can fire up young people and win this election."

Segal highlighted Harris' record as attorney general in California on enforcement and commitment on environmental justice as areas where a president may have leeway to act without backing from Congress.

"She had a long track record against various energy companies in California and also secured the $86 million settlement against Volkswagen on the diesel emissions issue," he noted.

Past stances

Harris took positions to the left of Biden on oil and natural gas during her 2019-2020 presidential primary campaign, signing onto a pledge advanced by anti-oil activists that espoused a climate test for all energy projects as well as promising to cancel permits for both the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines.

Her primary campaign also called for opposing new fossil fuel infrastructure and phasing out fossil fuel extraction on public lands.

The Biden administration has stopped short of those stances. Though it has advocated for climate impacts to be considered in energy project reviews, it has approved a large volume of fossil fuel infrastructure and continued oil and gas leasing.

Biden revoked the presidential permit for the heavy crude oil Keystone XL pipeline on his first day of office, but the review of the Dakota Access Pipeline is still operating, with a key US Army Corps of Engineers final environmental impact statement now expected in 2025.

Also to be determined is the next administration's positions on LNG export approvals, after Biden launched a review of climate, economic and national security impacts factoring into the public interest determination for exports to non-free trade agreement nations.

The group Oil Change US said it will be pushing Harris to meet everything in her 2020 platform and to go further.

Kevin Book, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners, anticipated there would be continuity between Biden and a Harris administration on oil and gas lease sales, and sanctions policies.

"Our default expectation was for more economic pressure on Russian barrels (possibly as soon as the election) and maybe less on Iranian and Venezuelan," Book said in an email.

Competing campaign messages

Meanwhile, Trump and Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance have made US energy production a core theme of the Republican campaign.

"So much starts with energy," Trump said last week during his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. "Remember, we have more liquid gold under our feet than any other country by far."

Book said Clearview expects a continued focus from the Democratic ticket on affordable gasoline prices and demonstrable climate action.

"To that point, a stepped-up emphasis on climate policy may offer a way to reinvigorate support from the under-30 voters whose turnout could potentially decide closely contested swing states," Book said in an email.