The News
Vice President Kamala Harris’ choice of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate elevates a politician with one of the strongest state-level records on clean energy in the US.
In 2023, Walz signed into law a target for Minnesota to get 100% of its power from zero-carbon sources, including nuclear, by 2040, and coal has fallen behind renewables and nuclear as the state’s top sources of power for the first time during his tenure. He has signed into law over $1 billion in funding for clean energy projects in the state, a move likened to a local version of the federal Inflation Reduction Act. And in June, he signed legislation aimed at shaving a full year off the time it takes to get permits to build energy and grid transmission projects. Earlier, as a member of Congress, he voted in favor of carbon-pricing legislation and pitched it to skeptical constituents in Minnesota as a new way to squeeze profit out of farmland.
Yet Walz has also shown a willingness to engage with the fossil fuel industry, including by approving the controversial Line 3 oil pipeline and supporting a hydrogen production project backed by Marathon Petroleum and the pipeline company TC Energy.
“He’s a fantastic pick,” said Josh Freed, senior vice president of climate and energy at the think tank Third Way. “Walz has a very mainstream, sensible, pragmatic, energy independence-oriented record.”
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Tim’s view
The choice of Walz may say as much about the climate questions Harris wants to avoid as those she wants to address. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, the runner-up to be her vice presidential nominee, has a strong record of support for his state’s natural gas fracking industry, and would have served as a business-friendly counterweight to the more activist elements of Harris’ climate agenda, while also giving her a stronger presence in a key battleground state. Yet his presence on the ticket would have invited questions about Harris’ approach to fossil fuels that would have been difficult for her to answer in a way that didn’t alienate either her green base or more moderate voters.
Walz, on the other hand, has much less fossil baggage. Rather than a counterweight, Harris has chosen a candidate whose approach to energy more closely resembles her long-term vision for the US. Minnesota produces no oil, gas, or coal. Walz is a disciple of the Biden administration’s IRA philosophy: Using a combination of regulation and public spending to seize on the clean energy boom as a driver of economic growth and job creation.
The state’s clean power target was a good start. But Walz quickly realized that meeting it would be impossible if it continued to take years or decades to build energy infrastructure. Walz and his staff were very hands-on in shepherding the permitting bill through the legislature, state representative Larry Kraft, a member of the state’s Democratic–Farmer–Labor party who co-sponsored the bill, told Semafor. Walz was focused on the details of the permitting process and stripping out inefficiencies, Kraft said, and at least as interested in the economic benefits of permitting reform as in the climate benefits. “He’s all about common sense, how to do things faster and better, more efficiently,” Kraft said. And he did it without scaling back the core environmental review process.
Economic ripple effects from the permitting law are already being felt across Minnesota’s economy, said Martin Pochtaruk, president of the solar manufacturer Heliene, which has a factory in the state, as the acceleration of grid construction feeds greater demand for locally-sourced energy materials and hardware: “Under Gov. Walz’s leadership, what you see is that the entire supply chain — from minerals to power generation — has been able to be reformed so that we have the economy of the 21st century but not the permitting of the 1950s.”
The upshot is that Walz is an experienced practitioner of the jobs-centric climate policy that Harris is seeking to defend from Donald Trump, and knows how to sell it to his constituents. And he may be willing to indulge Harris’s climate aspirations in a way other VP contenders would not have.
“We continue to see low, but non-zero odds of a ‘climate emergency’ declaration unlocking statutory powers that would provide an option—but not the obligation—to limit oil transportation and exports, and the production on federal lands (among other things),” Kevin Book, managing director of the consulting firm ClearView Energy Partners, wrote in a note. “The selection of Walz could be a possible early indication of Harris’ willingness to consider ‘break glass,’ progressive ideas of this sort.”
Quotable
“Walz IS brat!” — Emma Fisher, deputy director of the Climate Cabinet Action Fund, a political advocacy group that supports candidates with progressive views on climate.
Room for Disagreement
Vice presidents traditionally have a fairly peripheral role in setting energy policy, so Walz’s actual influence if he gets in office may be limited. Permitting reform is also much more complicated at the federal level, where fossil fuel influence is harder to overcome than in Minnesota. And some environmental groups in the state have complained about what they say is lax enforcement by Walz’s administration of air and water pollution standards.
On the campaign trail, it will be interesting to see how Walz addresses Minnesota’s biofuel industry, among the country’s largest — the protection of farm-related jobs likely outweighs the concerns some climate activists have about the carbon and land footprint of biofuels.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated Walz set aside $2 billion for clean energy projects in Minnesota. He has signed into law over $1 billion in funding for them.