With J.D. Vance’s selection as Donald Trump’s 2024 running mate, the fossil fuel industry has two champions atop the Republican ticket.
Since his 2022 Senate run, Vance has embraced economic populism, becoming a dedicated friend to fossil fuel interests and a culture warrior eschewing the transition to electric vehicles and clean energy. It’s been part of a hard turn to the right, politically, that has gotten him accused of flip-flopping on climate, much like he did with his own opinion of former President Trump.
The Ohio senator, Hillbilly Elegy author, and former venture capitalist has also been touted for being the first millennial added to a major party ticket. His current views on climate change put him in sharp contrast with a majority of his peers. But they haven’t always been this way.
During a 2020 speech at Ohio State University, when he outlined a lack of dynamism and progress, he said, “We of course have a climate problem in our society,” which he blamed on emissions from China. He went on to say that part of the problem is “we’re not generating energy much cleaner than we used to,” then touted solar as part of the solution to generating a substantial amount of power. Natural gas is cleaner, he added, “but isn’t going to take us to a clean energy future.”
Since then, he’s questioned the idea of man-made climate change, his policies have followed that viewpoint, and he’s become one of Congress’s biggest recipients of donations from oil companies (more than $350,000).
Regulatory Uncertainty
Today, if given the chance, he’d significantly roll back environmental regulations. As Heatmap reported, he’s attacked ESG investing as a “racket” and wants to double penalties for climate change protesters. He’s also opposed many elements of the Inflation Reduction Act and has demonized the current administration for championing renewable power at the same time the U.S. has become the world’s largest natural gas exporter. He doesn’t just oppose the clean energy transition; he also promotes an expansion of fossil fuel production, and wants the nation to “unleash our energy industry” by eliminating regulations and red tape.
Still, Vance’s anti-regulatory stance notably didn’t include the rail industry, especially after the East Palestine rail disaster in 2023, the most significant U.S. chemical spill in years. He advocated for significant government disaster response and sponsored the “Railway Safety Act,” legislation mandating new safety standards and fines for freight rail, especially involving hazardous materials. (Despite support from Ohio’s other senator, Democrat Sherrod Brown, the bill has languished and failed to move forward in Congress.)
Unplugging the Move to EVs
Vance also wants to rescind subsidies for electric vehicles. He advocated for eliminating $100 billion in federal EV credits with the Drive American Act, replacing those with America First Vehicle Credit that would reward drivers with $7,500 for an American-made, gas-powered car. He mocked the whole idea of EVs in a July 2022 radio interview, saying, “If you plug it into your wall, do these people think there are Keebler elves back there making energy in the wall? It comes, of course, from fossil fuels.”
In a later statement, Vance said, “If we’re subsidizing anything, it ought to be Ohio workers—not the green energy daydreams that are offshoring their jobs to China. We can secure a bright future for American autoworkers by passing this legislation and reversing the misguided policies of the Biden administration.”
He’s taking this stance at a time when battery and EV manufacturing has brought new jobs and investment to his state, $9.9 billion as of last year. Clean-energy-related jobs in Ohio now outnumber oil and gas jobs. Perhaps no surprise, not all workers agree with his policy positions: Climate power En Accion, an advocacy group focused on Latino voters, released a statement saying “J.D. Vance is a perfect example of how extreme climate change denial and the interests of Big Oil go against the well-being of working families and communities of color.”
Friend of Fracking
The decade-plus fracking boom in Ohio has made the state the nation’s sixth-largest producer of natural gas. Vance has enthusiastically supported this industry, which has brought significant jobs to the state as well as significant health risks, including years of groundwater contamination in some of the state’s poorest counties, and disruption in state parks, which have been opened up to gas companies. Vance wants to rapidly ramp up drilling and extraction. Ohio is lucky to live atop shale gas deposits, he wrote in a 2023 op-ed, and lucky to live in an era when hydraulic fracking can “unleash these abundant natural resources.”
There are other natural resources to unleash, namely wind and solar. Ohio has seen solar installations skyrocket, and is one of the top five states for installation in the nation, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. Vance has previously mocked renewables. In 2022, he said the “ridiculous ugly windmills all over Ohio farms . . . don’t produce enough electricity to run a cellphone.”
As vice president, Vance wouldn’t have any direct executive power to enact or institute policy, and Trump isn’t historically a team player when it comes to making decisions. But as reporting around the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has suggested, there’s a concerted effort in conservative circles to make sure Trump’s second term would feature much more policy-focused staffing decisions and a bigger push toward significantly changing the operations and outlook of the federal government. Offering the VP role to Vance, who’s friends with the head of the Heritage Foundation, suggests that this proposal just got a powerful ally.