Former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Republican Ohio Sen. JD Vance, are issuing a steady stream of warnings about a dire future for energy under a Kamala Harris administration.
They’ve been campaigning in key swing states — including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — and warning voters that a Harris presidency would mean forced purchases of electric vehicles, soaring fuel prices and electricity shortages.
Their messaging offers an indication that they think energy issues will help them woo voters in those states. But some of their oft-repeated claims are misleading, and others are false.
POLITICO’s E&E News has fact-checked some of the energy claims Trump and Vance are making on the campaign trail.
‘Everybody’s going to be forced to buy an electric car’
Warnings of an EV “mandate” from the Biden-Harris administration have become commonplace among Republicans and other critics of their climate and energy policies.
“It was Kamala Harris that implemented the EV mandate,” Vance said on Aug. 28 during a stop in Wisconsin. Trump said earlier in August that under a Harris administration, “Everybody’s going to be forced to buy an electric car.”
There is no EV “mandate” from the administration, although President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris have backed a series of climate policies that seek to incentivize the production and purchasing of EVs.
The Biden administration set a goal of having 50 percent of all new vehicle sales be electric by 2030, a goal buoyed by financial incentives in the massive climate and energy law known as the Inflation Reduction Act.
“Vice President Harris does not support an electric vehicle mandate,” Harris campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in an email.
Sending EV jobs to China
“It’s Kamala Harris who, in the name of the Green New Scam, wants to take your tax dollars and buy cars that are made in China,” said Vance on the campaign trail in Wisconsin last week.
This is a stretch, bordering on an outright falsehood.
The U.S. currently imports small amounts of EVs produced in China. The Biden administration’s 100 percent tariff on Chinese EVs announced earlier this year has already led EV firm Polestar to shift production to the U.S.
Chinese EV producer BYD, now considered an emerging EV-sector powerhouse, isn’t in the U.S. market, despite increasing sales in Europe and elsewhere globally.
China has a global stranglehold over the production of minerals that are necessary for clean energy products like EVs, such as lithium, copper and rare earth elements. But the EV tax breaks in the Inflation Reduction Act restrict Chinese-manufactured materials. That’s led Chinese firms to start producing in Morocco, a country that the U.S. shares a free trade agreement with.
The Biden administration says clean energy tax incentives and domestic content rules are boosting U.S. employment. Last week, the Biden administration said more than 140,000 clean energy jobs were added to the U.S. economy last year.
Electricity shortage
Republicans are repeating a claim that there’s not enough electricity to meet the demands of a fully electric transportation fleet.
“They want everybody to have an electric car. We don’t have enough electricity. We couldn’t make enough electricity for that,” Trump said in an August press conference.
Former Trump Interior Secretary David Bernhardt echoed that sentiment Thursday in a press conference, warning that the combination of policies pursued by the Biden-Harris administration could lead to “a famine of electricity in key parts of this country.”
The U.S. produces more renewable and gas power than ever before. But concerns about the U.S.’s ability to meet increasing electricity demand are real.
Broad electrification of the U.S. economy, including EV adoption and smart heating and cooling products, will boost the need for electrons on the grid. On top of that, artificial intelligence and data center projects are expected to spike electricity demand.
Fully electrifying the on-road transportation sector would require adding about 1,600 terawatts of energy, Britta Gross of the Electric Power Research Institute told a Senate panel in July.
The utility industry has successfully adapted to load growth of that size at least twice before, Gross told lawmakers — once from 1965 to 1985 and again from 1985 to 2005. “If the appropriate investments are enabled, the grid can support this transition,” she said.
Some utilities are seeking to build new gas plants to meet growing demand. But many energy experts caution that efficiency measures can also help to meet rising demand.
Electricity supply has largely met demand in the U.S. this summer, despite record heat and warnings about shortages from the North American Electric Reliability Corp., a quasi-government body.
Soaring fuel costs
If Harris wins the presidency, “you’re going to have fuel prices go through the roof,” Trump said in August.
“Why is fuel so expensive? Because Kamala Harris made a promise that she wanted to ban fracking, she wanted to ban offshore drilling. She wanted to destroy the American energy industry,” Vance said in Wisconsin last week.
But the reality is gasoline and natural gas prices are in line with historical averages. The average price at the pump Friday was $3.35 a gallon, which is on par with prices over the past 15 years. Natural gas prices have plummeted following a huge spike in 2022 that coincided with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Still, former Interior Secretary Bernhardt said on the call with reporters Thursday that the price of gasoline is “well over 40 percent higher than it was the day President Trump left.”
Prices dropped dramatically in the final months of Trump’s term amid a global lockdown triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.
But electricity prices have undoubtedly risen — by roughly 20 percent since late 2020, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration — and show few signs of falling. Experts attribute that to increased heating and cooling costs due to climate change, increased wildfire threats to the grid, and added costs linked to the clean energy build-out.
A fracking ban
“Kamala Harris wants to ban fracking,” Vance said in Pennsylvania last week. It’s been a popular theme for the GOP as Trump and Vance perceive a political vulnerability for Harris on that front in the Keystone State.
As a presidential candidate in 2019, Harris explicitly said she would ban fracking.
Harris no longer supports a ban on fracking, she told CNN in an interview Thursday.
“As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking,” Harris told CNN. “What I have seen is that we can grow and we can increase a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking,” she said.
But don’t expect Republicans to drop the issue. The Trump campaign hammered Harris for her previous stance on a fracking ban following her comments to CNN.
Reporter Timothy Cama contributed.
