AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Energy sparked some of the most contentious moments of the presidential debate Tuesday night, but the candidates may have found more agreement than expected.
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump expressed support for both fossil fuels and renewable energy, proposing a more nuanced stance that blurs the stereotypical partisan lines.
While Trump claimed Harris would harm oil and gas, Harris was adamant she will support the industry. Meanwhile, Trump expressed reserved support for solar energy.
“I will not ban fracking. I have not banned fracking as vice president United States, and in fact, I was the tie breaking vote on the inflation Reduction Act, which opened new leases for fracking. My position is that we have got to invest in diverse sources of energy so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil,” Harris said.
“If she won the election, the day after that election they’ll go back to destroying our country and oil will be dead. Fossil fuel will be dead. We’ll go back to windmills, and we’ll go back to solar, where they need a whole desert to get some energy to come out. You ever see a solar plant? By the way, I’m a big fan of solar,” Trump said.
Texas is home to more than one in 10 of American energy workers, and leads the nation in both oil and gas and wind production. In fact, Texas produces nearly as much renewable energy as it does natural gas.
“We need more solar. We need more batteries. We need more natural gas. We need geothermal… it’s all of the above and below,” President and CEO of the Texas Association of Business Glenn Hamer said. “We want to have our cake and eat it too.”
Hamer said “there is no comparison” between the candidates’ records on energy, however. He supports the Trump administration’s energy policies, citing the Biden administration’s ban on liquid natural gas exports as a particularly harmful policy to the Texas economy.
However, he hopes a second Trump administration would continue Biden’s support for clean energy.
We want to make sure that the that the promotion on clean energy technologies, and also things like hydrogen development and carbon sequestration, is continued,” Hamer said. “We want to have our cake and eat it too.”
Investors are pouring money into all forms of Texas energy with a bias for profit over politics. They say the market, not politicians, should influence which sectors win and lose.
“The market allows us through signals that we call prices, to let us know what it wants,” Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of Regal Point Capital Vijay Marolia said. “To ignore or to artificially influence a natural mechanism like a price signal is doing everybody a disservice.”