Scorecard

On August 6, 2024, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris chose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her vice presidential running mate. As a Congressman representing Minnesota’s First District, and more recently as Governor of the State of Minnesota, Walz has consistently pursued policies that threaten the ability of people to access affordable and reliable energy.

Early Career in U.S. House of Representatives

In 2009, Walz backed the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill that would...

The Biden-Harris administration announced plans to phase out the use of single-use plastics from all federal operations by 2035, as part of its strategy to deal with plastic pollution. While this falls short of Vice-President Harris's pledge to ban all single use plastics , it indicates she is serious about moving in that direction. The phase-out would start with a goal to end federal procurement of single-use plastics from food service operations, events, and packaging by 2027. It would...

Tim Walz, V.P. Kamala Harris’s choice as her vice presidential running mate and Governor of Minnesota, has one of the most extreme state-level records on “clean energy” in the United States, rivaling Governor Newsom in California. In 2023, Walz signed into law a target for Minnesota to get 100 percent of its power from zero-carbon sources  by 2040, having signed legislation prioritizing the creation of “greener” plants in areas that previously featured fossil-fuel plants.  Coal has...

Presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ claim that she no longer supports a ban on fracking contrasts with what she said five years ago. Just before she dropped out of the 2020 presidential race in 2019 and joined President Joe Biden’s ticket, at a CNN town hall, she made it clear that she very much supports banning hydraulic fracturing (fracking}. She said , “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking and starting with what we can do on day one around public lands,...

Construction of U.S. solar-manufacturing plants by Chinese companies is surging, putting China in position to dominate the industry, as other American factories struggle to compete despite federal subsidies.  Chinese companies will have at least 20 gigawatts’ worth of annual solar panel production capacity on U.S. soil within the next year, enough to serve about half the U.S. market. The group includes seven companies  backed by Chinese firms including Jinko Solar, Trina Solar, JA Solar,...

The Biden-Harris administration is considering further restricting oil development in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve (NPR-A), the nation’s largest swath of public land. The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will be soliciting public comment  on whether to expand or designate new “special areas” in the 23-million-acre reserve. The move could extend the areas of the NPR-A that are mostly off limits to drillers and stymie new exploration for oil in the western...

President Biden ended his reelection campaign on Sunday, July 21, under mounting pressure from Democrats following his poorly received debate performance. By endorsing Harris, he has positioned her as the frontrunner to succeed him. However, there is still some degree of uncertainty looming as Democrats hurriedly work to assemble a new 2024 ticket before the party’s convention on August 19-22 in Chicago.  

Harris' stance on energy, both during her tenure as a senator and as a candidate...

The Biden administration plans to award General Motors and Chrysler-parent Stellantis nearly $1.1 billion in grants to convert existing car manufacturing plants to build electric vehicles and components. The Department of Energy (DOE) announced $1.7 billion  in planned grants to help fund the conversion of 11 “at risk” plants in eight states to enable the production of 1 million electric vehicles annually, help retain 15,000 existing jobs, and create 3,000 new positions. The plants are...

On July 5, Biden’s Interior Department blocked 28 million acres of federal land (D-1 lands) in the state of Alaska from any mining or oil and gas development, which removes an area the size of the state of Pennsylvania from resource development. The Biden administration also blocked  a 211-mile gravel road, the Ambler Access Road, that would have connected mining districts in west-central Alaska to a highway that runs through the middle of the state. The mines are rich in copper and cobalt...

A federal judge halted President Joe Biden’s temporary moratorium on new licenses for exports of US liquefied natural gas (LNG). U.S. District Judge James D. Cain Jr. in Louisiana issued a preliminary injunction  in a lawsuit filed by 16 states, including Louisiana, Alaska, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming, which argued Biden violated the U.S. Constitution and other federal laws by halting licenses in January to assess their impact on climate change. Under Biden’s direction, the...