|  | | Transition Finance Weekly |
| Exploring the policy, politics, and economics of the clean energy transition |
| Each week here in Transition Finance Weekly, researchers and analysts from Pleiades Strategy summarize the top stories and trends related to the policy, politics, and economics of the clean energy transition in the states.
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| 1. VP Harris Weighs In on Fracking in Pennsylvania — With Eye to Past, Not Future |
| Clean energy industries employ 8 times more PA workers than the state’s gas industry — but fracking still earned a debate stage nod. Vice President Kamala Harris was pressed on her support for fracking during this week’s presidential debate. While the political media has framed fracking as a potent political issue in the critical battleground of Pennsylvania, the fact remains that fracking represents the state’s past and not its future. More than half of Pennsylvania’s energy jobs are now in clean energy, and most IRA investment there has been in low-income communities. Voters understand this: the state’s voters overwhelmingly support clean energy, and only 3% say opposition to fracking and drilling would turn them significantly negative on Harris. Harris’ climate record includes casting the tie-breaking vote on the IRA, the nation’s most significant climate investment ever, which has driven an economic renaissance across the country via investment in clean energy, grid infrastructure, and resilience. Since the IRA, Pennsylvania has seen more than $1 billion in clean energy investment and almost 3,000 new jobs. In contrast, Donald Trump asked for $1 billion in campaign cash from fossil fuel executives in exchange for promises to scuttle IRA climate investments (which he calls a “scam”), eliminate emissions rules, and auction off more drilling leases. Trump’s Project 2025 plan would kill clean energy jobs, threaten public health, and end any hope of meeting 2030 reduction goals.
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| | 2. Woke Politics Distract as Regulatory Capture Drives Up Alabama Energy Rates, Slows the Clean Energy Transition |
| State regulators operate in the shadows, where they can weaponize anti-woke politics and tilt the market toward fossil fuels. In Alabama, energy rates are set by the Public Service Commission (PSC) in an opaque negotiation with utilities like Southern Company’s Alabama Power (serving 57% of the market), which is guaranteed a 15% return by law. As a result, rates there are high, with an especially high burden on low-income households; Birmingham residents spend 17% of their income on energy costs. Even in right-wing Texas, culture war politics haven’t prevented explosive growth in solar, despite pro-fossil fuel politicians’ best efforts. In Alabama, though, PSC commissioners, who are elected, run political ads promising to fight “liberal ‘woke’ ideas,” and take millions in campaign cash directly from Alabama Power — operator of America’s dirtiest generating plant — which is also funding news outlets to shape coverage of the state’s energy industry. The PSC is playing along with Alabama Power’s determination to slow solar growth in the state, too. With regulators’ blessing, the utility levies fees on rooftop solar and solar farms, and recently cut its solar power payments. That’s why solar serves only 6% of renewable energy in Alabama, compared to 50% of renewable power next door in Georgia.
Alabama journalist Brian Lyman: “What good is a regulatory body whose members seem distracted by culture wars and don’t push back against the entities they regulate? …[I]t would be a lot more useful to have commissioners who understand you can’t lower a power bill by yelling ‘woke agenda’ at it.” |
| | 3. Indiana Pension Pulls Investments from ESG Funds |
| Despite the costs to pension holders, state investment managers are complying with the state’s Heritage-backed anti-ESG law.
State Rep. Ryan Hatfield: “[HB 1008] is the opposite of capitalism…. It used to be in this chamber, that both parties stood up here and said, ‘… Allow businesses to conduct business in the manner that they view best, and for God’s sake, no matter what we do, protect Hoosier retirees.’ I don’t know what happened to that message.” |
| | 4. New Study: Oil and Gas Interests Are Using Schools to Undermine Climate Action |
| Case in point: Texas, whose state education chair — an owner of an oilfield services company — offered a strong steer on climate education in textbooks. A new study details all the ways the fossil fuel industry is embedding itself (and its money) in universities around the world to co-opt faculty and students and reduce pressure for action on climate change. Companies are endowing chairs and sponsoring research centers and conferences, and they’re buying off students with scholarships and advising on curricula. At the same time, fossil fuel interests are influencing how their industry is portrayed at the K-12 level. In Texas, the State Board of Education (SBOE) has required textbook publishers to delete unfavorable references to fossil fuels in order to get board approval, which helps them sell into the state’s enormous market. SBOE chair Aaron Kinsey, the CEO of an oilfield services company, pulled state school funds out of BlackRock as an anti-ESG statement, putting the interests of a politically preferred industry over those of Texas schoolchildren.
SBOE member Aicha Davis, objecting to the board’s textbook vote: “Do you want pictures of children in oil fields?”
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| | 5. Illinois State Treasurer Pushes Back Against Anti-ESG Grandstanding |
| In a House subcommittee hearing, Treasurer Michael Frerichs cites the high costs of politically motivated anti-ESG legislation. Once again wasting transition finance doers’ time, as the House nears a funding deadline, the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee held another hearing this week on ESG. In his testimony, Illinois State Treasurer Michael Frerichs detailed the costs of culture war legislation: “study after study, and meta-studies, have shown” that anti-ESG bills “are costing states money.” He also highlighted the importance of making information available to investors through disclosure of risk, including climate risk. Chair Bill Huizenga (R-MI) pushed the typical anti-woke talking points, absurdly claiming that investment asset managers “don't want to maximize retirement profits, but rather seek to push a far-left social and political agenda.”
From Forbes: Full hearing video |
| | ANTI-ESG BILLIONAIRE LEONARD LEO VOWS TO “CRUSH” LIBERAL AMERICA
Billionaire Leonard Leo — architect of the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court and a major funder of the anti-ESG movement — is investing $1 billion into a campaign to (in his words) “crush liberal dominance where it’s most insidious” in American corporations and media.
In a rare interview, Leo said his organization, the “Marble Freedom Trust,” would be stepping up its investment in calling out the private sector. “Expect us to increase support for organizations that call out companies and financial institutions that bend to the woke mind virus spread by regulators and NGOs, so that they have to pay a price for putting extreme leftwing ideology ahead of consumers,” he said.
Already, Leo’s money is underwriting widespread attacks on DEI and ESG policies, including through state legislation and executive action; he’s funded the push to enact not only anti-ESG laws, but also spurious “consumer protection” laws that block banks from excluding customers on rational grounds — which both banks and the Treasury Department have said violate federal law. |
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