The 2024 election has finally arrived. Early ballots have been mailed. The candidates are crossing the country, making their final pitches. Analysts are poring over countless polls, while tension builds. 

Climate and energy didn’t surface as a central issue of this year’s presidential campaign. But the results of the race — as well as many more down-ballot — will have huge repercussions for the future of U.S. energy policy. 

In today’s episode, the hosts explore the nuanced role climate played in this election cycle, highlight some down-ballot races to watch, and consider some scenarios and priorities for the lame duck session. 

Also in the show: what lessons should lawmakers take away from recent catastrophic hurricanes? Could a new approach to FEMA funding and flood insurance lessen the impacts of the next big storm?

This episode wraps up with our lightning round segment, the Mark-Up.

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Political Climate is co-produced by Boundary Stone Partners, a leading bipartisan climate change strategic advisory and government affairs firm. Their mission-driven approach combines innovative solutions with expertise in technology, finance, policy, federal funding, and advocacy. Learn more and get in touch today at BoundaryStone.com.

Concerned about how the 2024 election might impact the programs, policies, and incentives that matter most to you? Let Boundary Stone Partners' Climate24 service help you navigate the political landscape with their policy navigator tool, resources, and bespoke services. Learn more at BoundaryStone.com/Climate24.

Transcript

Julia Pyper: All right, guys, what's your plan for election night? What are you going to do? Drinking games, Emily?

Emily Domenech: I mean, I don't know that I recommend that for anyone considering how volatile our elections have been lately, but I am sure I will be watching. Maybe I'll be on TV. We'll see.

Julia Pyper: Oh, all right. I wonder if anyone's like, "I'm just going to sit it out." Anyone in our world?

Emily Domenech: I'm just going to take a break.

Julia Pyper: I'm just going to take a breather.

Emily Domenech: I know a lot of people who are like, "I want to leave Washington during the elections because it gets too weird." So it's not that uncommon.

Brandon Hurlbut: Emily, do you think we'll know that night?

Emily Domenech: Oh, definitely not. Absolutely not. Well, no.

Julia Pyper: There's no way.

Emily Domenech: We might know the presidential outcome, but I don't think we're going to know the House majority certainly on election night because those take a lot longer to come in.

Julia Pyper: All right. Make some popcorn. Buckle up. It's going to be a wild couple of weeks.

Welcome to Political Climate. I'm Julia Pyper. Believe it or not, the 2024 Election has finally arrived. Early ballots have been mailed. The candidates are crisscrossing the country and making their final pitches. Analysts are pouring over countless polls and citizens on both sides of the political divide are sweating the results. Climate energy didn't surface as a central issue of this year's presidential campaign, but the results of that race, as well as many more down ballot could have a huge impact on the future of US Energy policy. The next president and Congress will have a huge say on everything from the future of the Inflation Reduction Act to new transmission lines, carbon capture, the electric vehicle market and so much more, not to mention clean water, clean air, et cetera.

In today's episode, we'll explore the role climate played in this election cycle, highlight down ballot races to watch for and consider some scenarios and priorities for the lame duck session. Finally, we'll wrap up with our lightning round segment, The Markup. That's all coming up on Political Climate.

As always, I'm joined by my co-hosts, Brandon Hurlbut and Emily Domenech. Brandon served as Chief of Staff in President Obama's Energy Department and went on to found Boundary Stone Partners and Overture VC. Good morning, Brandon. I hear you're in San Francisco today.

Brandon Hurlbut: Yes, been on the circuit speaking a lot of different things. Was at NREL last week with a lot of founders and investors. I joined the NREL Investor Advisory Board, which was super cool and then last night, a big dinner in San Francisco.

Julia Pyper: So I know these are work-specific, maybe wonk-specific style meetings, but is the election dominating there? Is everyone just heads down on what they got to do?

Brandon Hurlbut: Oh, 100%.

Julia Pyper: Yeah.

Brandon Hurlbut: No, 100% they're all asking, so we have a lot to discuss today.

Julia Pyper: Excellent. All right. Emily's also with us. She served as Senior Energy Advisor to Speakers of the House, Kevin McCarthy and Mike Johnson and is now a Senior Vice President at Boundary Stone. Hey, Emily, you're in the DC Area. What's the election vibe there?

Emily Domenech: I think everybody is just waiting and ready for it to be over.

Julia Pyper: Are we there yet?

Emily Domenech: We want to get to work, y'all.

Julia Pyper: Fair enough. Exactly. Well, this is our last episode before the big day, and so we wanted to recap the campaign and consider a few scenarios that could unfold over the next couple of months, share some of those down ballot races we've been watching. But first to set the scene, we've talked about the debates, both the presidential and vice presidential debates. We were obviously at the DNC and the RNC and we had those great episodes, looking at the different themes that played out there with respect to climate and energy. We talked about energy affordability a lot. I'm curious, what role do you guys think climate played at all this election cycle? Historically, that's been an issue that voters don't always rally around and yet you saw the Harris campaign for instance, bring on Camila Thorndike to actually lead their climate voter outreach, so they're trying to lean in on this. What is your takeaway now that we're seeing the election cycle wind down of where climate played in, if at all?

Brandon Hurlbut: Well, I think it played a little bit more than in the past. Trump talked about it in his convention speech. It came up very early in the vice presidential debate, but it's still not a driving force, I think, in voters' minds when they go to the polls. There's some recent polling that came out that a lot of young people have real anxiety over climate, including Republicans. The numbers are pretty staggering, and so I still think it's playing a role with younger people, but there's going to be big impacts on the outcome of the election on this energy transition for sure.

Julia Pyper: What's at the biggest risk right now?

Brandon Hurlbut: Well, I think our role in the world on this issue, we joined the Paris Treaty, then we got out of it, then we came back in. I think if we keep doing this pinball approach, we're going to lose trust on the global community about is America really serious about addressing this? And then we'll see the big tax debate next year in DC how this shakes out. I had coffee with a very powerful senator last week and he was expressing that no doubt that Trump will try to take away so much of this, but he really pointed to that House letter of the 18 Republicans that came out in support of-

Julia Pyper: The IRA?

Brandon Hurlbut: ... much of the IRA, more of the scalpel approach is the language that they're using and I think some behind the scenes conversations with some of Republican senators. So I don't know if that tracks with what Emily is hearing, but that was reassuring.

Julia Pyper: Emily, I know you have a different view on this. Tell me a bit about how you're seeing climate play into the election cycle now that we've got a little more record to look at.

Emily Domenech: I think what we've seen is Kamala Harris take a real step back from focusing on climate. This was a huge part of Joe Biden's agenda, arguably the big piece of legislation that he passed under his term as president, and I don't think we've seen the same emphasis on climate from Vice President Harris, which is surprising because in the past, she really has talked about it quite a bit. I think, again, we hear every single day about how she's not going to ban fracking. That is a really interesting twist on this issue considering where her progressive base has been. So I think that's one interesting piece. I think the other one is we are seeing what we've seen play out on this podcast, which is that Republicans and Democrats have a lot of overlap when it comes to trade and reshoring American manufacturing, and that's good for the clean energy agenda.

We're hearing really similar rhetoric from both sides of the aisle on that issue. And so when I look forward to the business community looking for stability and policy, I think the real space where we'll see that is in the trade space and in the looking for new creative ways to make investments to bring back that manufacturing capacity, both in the clean energy space and in other major heavy manufacturing areas. But the big thing to remember for those of us who talk and care about climate change is that if we're doing it here in the United States, we're often doing it with much more stringent environmental standards and with lower emissions so that even that process of reshoring other industries can lower global emissions, which is a good thing.

Brandon Hurlbut: I have a question for you, Emily, about it is historically, the Chamber of Commerce was such a powerful voice that was mainly aligned with Republicans and Conservatives, and now we have this political realignment that's unfolding before our eyes where the Republican Party is becoming more populist and the Democratic Party is becoming more the party of college-educated voters. Do you see that shift happening at something like the US Chamber and do you think that that will impact the discussions next year in DC on climate?

Emily Domenech: I mean, as somebody who used to work for Speaker McCarthy, who took a really hard break from the US Chamber about five years ago, I don't have very many nice things to say about them. I think they frankly have undermined their position over, and over, and over again with Republicans, and that's part of why they have less influence here in Washington, but I think that can change. President Trump, while he's very much a populist, he is very representative. He's a businessman himself. He tends to talk that way. He tends to think that way. This is a guy who has long ties with the business community. It's part of why he used to give money to Democrats and Republicans back when he was a businessman in New York.

So I could see something like the Chamber trying to rehabilitate their position by leaning in really heavily on this how do we reshore American industry piece of the agenda and maybe stepping back a bit from a more corporatist approach, but I think the Chamber has a long way to go before Republicans are really going to buy back into that. And to clarify, I mean the US Chamber, the national entity, not necessarily those local chambers of Congress, which are still quite Republican generally.

Julia Pyper: Well, one thing I wanted to circle back on is this great piece that Josh Siegel wrote in Politico talking about what you mentioned there, Emily, as Kamala Harris's de-emphasis on climate. Josh had this piece where he interviewed Camila Thorndike, who I mentioned was brought on board to rally climate voters. They viewed this as a key constituency for that election and actually getting students and young folks in particular to show up and actually vote. The Harris campaign has its own polling that said 82% of students are more likely to vote for a candidate who they think will make a difference on climate change. Emily, you might have different view on that, right? Around where does the impact actually land in terms of carbon emissions reductions and what policies drive that, but clearly that's the kind of momentum the Harris campaign now in the final weeks is trying to drum up, get those students to show up.

Brandon Hurlbut: Well, there's a lot of nuance there with the youth vote. It used to be primarily Democratic historically, but now young men are conservative.

Emily Domenech: Yeah. I think we've been following this for a long time, and interestingly enough, even conservative young men do care about climate. I think that's an issue that really, really shaped our effort to reframe the way Republicans talk about this issue during my time in Congress. So I think figuring out ways, to your point, Julia, regardless of what your solutions are on this issue, to be able to talk about it in a way that reaches that voter group that cares about it is important. I think I wasn't surprised to see Harris's team try to figure out how to balance this. They've got a couple of hot button issues that have really peaked with folks on the Left, particularly in that youth vote. Climate is one of them. The situation in Israel is another. Those are some things that have made it difficult to perhaps motivate those people, and you got to bring all your people out in order to win really tight elections like this so it doesn't surprise me.

Julia Pyper: All right, let's shift to down ballot races. So Emily, I know you've been tracking several of these, so let's not forget yes, there's the race for the White House, the Senate, the US House, but we've also got a ton of state level races, even down to local school boards to public utility commissions in some states.

Emily Domenech: So I want to give a couple of things to watch for our listeners when they come into election night when they want to get past the noise from the Presidential Election and think about our real policymakers who are going to be in Congress. The key races I would say to watch in the House that we'll see, we'll definitely see a handful of things that flip regardless. A great example is the Abigail Spanberger seat in Virginia has been held by a Democrat. I think that's likely to be picked up by Derrick Anderson, a Republican who's run a strong race in an open seat. I think we could also see some races flip on the Republican side, like a Juan Ciscomani might be in trouble or a David Schweikert in Arizona, or some seats that might flip either way.

But the big trends that we're going to need to see for, let's say a Democrat flip of the house is some significant losses in both California and New York. Those delegations. So I'm talking Mike Garcia, a David Valadao, a Ken Calvert, those seats are seats that Democrats are going to have to flip if they're going to want to be able to pick up enough seats to win the House. The same is true in New York, I think. Brandon Williams is probably in trouble, but looking at D'Esposito, Lawler, and Molinaro in the New York delegation, those are some races that on election night, I would be watching. If one of those races gets called early, that's indicative of the direction of the trend lines in the House because we're probably going to have a three or four seat majority no matter how you slice it.

Brandon Hurlbut: Yeah, and these California races, people vote by mail. I already voted. So to count all those ballots, historically it takes a long time. So if it's going to come down to these seats in California, we're definitely not going to know.

Emily Domenech: And I would note too that last election cycle, we didn't know who held the House majority until about two weeks later because of those mail-in ballots, particularly in states... Those California seats really did hinge the majority and it took us 10 days to figure out if those guys won. When it comes to the Senate, I want to highlight a couple of races, not necessarily because they're going to cut in a way that's unexpected, but because they give you a good example of how one party or another can really change the dynamics if they get a good candidate running in a state that perhaps in the past, hasn't been competitive.

The first one I'll highlight is the Michigan open Senate seat, which is Elise Slotkin, who's a great Democrat candidate who has been really successful in the House in a swing district, but she's running against Mike Rogers, who frankly did a great job of consolidating the party in the primary, getting his primary opponents to endorse him and has run a really strong race. I think Slotkin's still going to pull that race out, but she's had to call in the cavalry and bring a lot of money into Michigan for that race for something that we didn't expect. The same has been true for a candidate like Ted Cruz, who is in a really safe Republican seat. Trump is running up by 10 to 12 points in Texas. Ted Cruz is only running up by three, and that's because Colin Allred is a really strong candidate, who's run a good race and appeals broadly across the state and has jabbed it at Cruz in the places where it stinks. So go ahead, Brandon. Sorry.

Brandon Hurlbut: Emily, previously on this show I made a bet with Shane about Texas that I won and he had to take Julia and I out to a very expensive dinner at Nobu.

Brandon Hurlbut: We ran it up. I ran it up on Shane. Would you like to make a bet on Texas?

Emily Domenech: What's the bet?

Brandon Hurlbut: I would say she will finish under seven points difference. If we set the line at seven, would you take the over on a bet?

Emily Domenech: I'm not sure I would. I'm not sure I would because I think... Again, I think-

Brandon Hurlbut: You're smarter than Shane.

Emily Domenech: This is a weird election cycle. I think Trump probably will come out above that, but I also think that, again, to go back to these down ballot races, sometimes they run in a vacuum. A great example in the flip side, I've been talking about running good candidates makes these races competitive, running bad candidates makes competitive seats a blowout. Arizona is a perfect example of that where we have a really tight race. It's absolutely a swing state in terms of presidential politics, but Gallego is absolutely running away with this race and looks like he's about to just wallop Kari Lake because she's a terrible candidate.

Brandon Hurlbut: It's such an interesting point though, Emily, over the last several cycles, 99% of the time, the winning Senate candidate and the party of the president are the same in the states. And so in this case where Democrat Senate candidates are winning these swing states, it would have to be completely out of step with the recent history where they would split, but that could happen. It would just be out of step.

Emily Domenech: I think part of why that could happen is that we've seen places where there are better Republican candidates, with the exception of Arizona, where I think we're seeing this tired playbook where we've run a lunatic and they're not doing well. Cook political Report just moved the Pennsylvania Senate seat to a toss-up, and that is totally because David McCormick has run a really strong race, but Bob Casey has incredible name ID in Pennsylvania. He should win that seat. The fact that it's even in the game is because frankly, the NRSC and Steve Daines and Mitch McConnell have done a good job recruiting some better candidates in these states where we should be playing better. So I actually think we could see some places where we split that vote, and that's a super interesting trend that we haven't seen in the past. And again, it totally comes down to candidate quality when it comes to these Senate races.

Julia Pyper: You talked about Arizona. One race I'm looking at is for the State Senate, District 17. It's a tight race between a guy named Vince Leach, a Republican who served in Legislature from 2015 until 2022 and is now coming back into the race. And Democrat John McLean, who's new to politics. He used to work in the defense engineering industry. This is one of those interesting districts. It's mostly white, upper middle class, so it'll be interesting to see what those voters are being motivated by today. It has been gerrymandered in favor of Republicans over time, but now you've got this candidate, the Democrat, John McLean, who is trying to be one of those climate candidates without really talking about climate, talking about the fact that water access apparently really undermines property values in that part of the state. There's also a lot of pain around energy affordability and things like solar are really attractive there. So it's one of those interesting areas where there's a lot of different motivating factors.

The Republican, Vince Leach, is up by two points as of today, but it's one of those places where the Democrat has gained a fair bit of ground despite some gerrymandering because he seems to be framing, perhaps in part, some of these climate issues, not again as climate, but in ways that really matter to voters in that area. What happens at the State Legislature will affect the way Arizona goes on, say, utilizing federal dollars from the Inflation Reduction Act, whatever they're going to do in terms of their own water management and other environmental issues, which is key for that state. Are there any other down ballot races you guys are looking at, maybe at the state level where you think the control of that State Legislature is up for grabs? Because again, state policy really matters. We can't forget how important that is.

A couple other things I would highlight to frame it up is Minnesota Democrats are within a few seats of losing the margin that allowed them to pass under Governor Tim Walz, a law to move the state to 100% carbon free electricity by 2040. So that majority there is really important for them to pass big bills and to protect them and pass new bills going forward, at least when it comes to the carbon-free electricity goals that those lawmakers have control of. State legislatures in Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania are also up for grabs. North Carolina has a gubernatorial election where climate has really played in and created some sharp divides. We talked about Arizona. They also have a race for the Arizona Corporation Commission, so the folks who oversee electricity policy in the state, and Montana also elects members for agencies that regulate electric utilities. So those are just a few of the states where, again, the down ballot really could make or break what climate and energy policy looks like in the months and years to come.

Brandon Hurlbut: I would say that historically, the Republicans are so much better at organizing in those races, prioritizing those races, and they elect those state legislatures, which then draw the lines for Congress and they're able to get those more favorable maps. The Democrats, somebody that's trying to do this is Caroline Spears, the Climate Cabinet. So if you do care about the races that you just mentioned, Julia, for our listeners, you should go to Climate Cabinet, reach out to Caroline. She can help you get plugged into those state races that are really important.

Emily Domenech: I would just add that I think oftentimes, we really focus on our elections in presidential years and then we kind of ignore those off-year elections, but oftentimes, we'll see trend lines starting immediately after a presidential election. So for example, my home state of Virginia, we have our gubernatorial election in 2025. So that's something that really tends to be a response to what we've seen in the presidential cycle and to your point, Julia, can really dictate the direction that states go. I mean, Governor Youngkin has been a big shift for Virginia, and it'll be interesting to see if that trend continues, or if it shifts back to that more purple state.

Julia Pyper: Yeah, interesting though, it depends on who the leader is, to your point about candidate quality and what their motivations are. I know the Youngkin Administration's been really interested in nuclear power, for instance, and they have not been anti-renewables, per se. They've been more of an all of the above approach in my interactions with them. So again, it is Virginia. It's more moderate state I'd say overall, so that's sort of speaking to the electorate I suppose, but carbon-free power is still within the realm of their talking points regardless of it being a Republican in governor in office there.

Emily Domenech: Yeah, I mean, I'm a big fan of Glenn Youngkin. I hope he continues to run for office. I hate that we have a single term in Virginia, so otherwise, I'm pretty confident he'd be reelected. He's very popular.

Julia Pyper: Starting to wind down this segment, let's talk quickly about the lame duck session. So this is after the election. We talked about how we may not know the election results for a little bit, but certainly folks who are currently in Congress will see what they can pass or not pass in those final months of the session. Emily, what are you looking for in these lame duck months?

Emily Domenech: So I think the opportunity window is really dependent on the direction that the races go in the House. If Republicans hold onto the House of Representatives, I would expect to see very little activity in the lame duck, probably only a disaster supplemental, and maybe a short-term CR and nothing more because at the end of the day, Speaker Mike Johnson has to win another speaker race first thing in January, and it'll be very difficult for him to do that if he cuts some big bipartisan spending deal, which frankly closes the door for opportunities on things like permitting reform that I think many of our listeners would really like to see get across the finish line.

If we end up in a situation where we've got a Democrat flip for the House and perhaps a Republican flip for the Senate, then maybe we're making some deals because we're looking at an outgoing majority in the House of Representatives who might say, "Hey, this might be our best... Maybe the Manchin-Barrasso effort is our best chance at getting permitting reform before an incoming, say, Harris presidency and there's a reason to make deals on some of these side issues that we've seen that are really important to the clean energy community, but maybe not top of mind for us as we roll into a lame duck session where we've got to do disaster funding, the National Defense Authorization Act and fund the government." So I think that opportunity window really, really depends on what the makeup is, and ironically, I think divided government in the next Congress gives us our best chance at activity in the lame duck.

Brandon Hurlbut: Emily's the expert, but the schedule does not seem to allow for much to happen because of disaster and then Thanksgiving and then you get to Christmas very quickly. I think there's some gaps on permitting between the Democrats and the Senate that is not going to get resolved on that short timeframe.

Emily Domenech: Yeah, I would say never underestimate Congress's ability to get through something quickly when they want to go home for Christmas. But you're absolutely right, lame ducks are miserable for Congressional staffers for a reason, and it's because we try to do everything we should have done in the last 18 months in about four weeks.

Brandon Hurlbut: Okay. I got one question that I wanted to ask Emily. So Emily, when I talk about the stakes of this election, people don't have to believe me, they can believe the Republicans that worked for Donald Trump, like his Chief of Staff, John Kelly, and you can go to the things that he's been saying and raising the dangers of putting him back in office. What do you make of all of these Republicans, particularly the ones that worked for him that are now out there, Liz Cheney and others actively campaigning for Kamala Harris? Do you think that there is a scenario where 10% of registered Republicans might hold their nose, they've never voted for a Democrat before, but they want to get rid of MAGA and they want to get their party back and they might either not vote at the top of the ticket and only vote for down ballot or vote for Kamala? Do you think that that's a realistic scenario or am I enamored with Liz Cheney and misperceiving?

Emily Domenech: My take on former Congresswoman Cheney is that she is every person who feels the need to talk at a meeting whether they have something to say or not. Her influence is very much she'll get put on TV because of her last name, and I give her credit for that, but I don't think she's really a mover and shaker in the Republican Party. She wasn't when she was in Congress and she hasn't been certainly since. I think my counter to you would be are there Democrats in the... Michigan, for example, where we saw a pretty significant number of Democrats vote for no one in the primary who aren't going to vote for Kamala Harris because they're concerned about her policy, her not leaning in on climate or not leaning in on Israel? I think both of these things are outliers and we get pretty tiny groups of people who don't actually vote for their home party. But I do think that maybe we'll get a few on each side, but I don't think those are going to be the driving force in this election.

Brandon Hurlbut: That's interesting because I think if Kamala wins, it will be because there was a disproportionate female turnout, and I think that there might be more of these Republicans that won't tell a pollster, won't tell their neighbor, and there's a very few of them, but I think that they might actually not vote or vote for her, and even a small amount would make a big difference.

Emily Domenech: I would say I think it was a much easier sell for Republicans four years ago to vote for Joe Biden, who was considered to be a "moderate" who was going to restore that normalcy and sense of normal operations to the White House. I don't think we've seen that happen in the last four years. I think we've seen the economy turn down. I think we've seen people see Joe Biden frankly be a much more partisan president than folks expected, and the reality is Kamala Harris is one of the most progressive candidates to ever be nominated for president, and I think that that's a much bigger issue to most Republicans than the personality politics we've seen on TV.

Brandon Hurlbut: Because it's not just Liz Cheney. I'm really interested to see the impact of all of these people that worked for Trump that are out there campaigning. You don't think it'll make much of a difference. I think it could.

Emily Domenech: I think there's a lot of office turnover for Kamala Harris, but nobody puts mics in front of those people.

Brandon Hurlbut: Yeah, I bet they're still voting for her.

Emily Domenech: We'll see.

Julia Pyper: All right. Give us your closing arguments here for why each of your party's presidential nominees going back to the top of the ticket has a better climate and energy policy. So you get 30 to 45 seconds here, Emily and then Brandon.

Emily Domenech: So Brandon gets to close so he gets the advantage here, but I'll just say I think the best way for us to grow clean energy and to reduce global emissions is for the US to have the strongest economy possible. We saw emissions come down under President Trump's first term. I think we absolutely could see that happen again by bringing back more of that manufacturing capacity and making more investments to build more of everything here in the United States. That is going to require that comprehensive permitting reform that we saw President Trump pushing in his last term. And I think for climate, if you care about building clean energy, you need those regulatory burdens to be out of the way so that you can build quickly. Otherwise, we're never going to meet those goals. So I think the best pathway to building quickly is a President Trump win.

Julia Pyper: And that's assuming that with even Republicans holding Senate, we couldn't get something done to speed up permitting. Do you think there's a no shot if President Trump's not in office, or there's still a path?

Emily Domenech: I think it is far less that will get done under a divided government that has to be done only through Congress than what President Trump did in his first NEPA proposal in the previous term. That opened the door for far more streamlining and much faster policy through the executive process and that rulemaking process that I would expect to see again in a future administration. So it doesn't necessarily mean that you couldn't do it through lawmaking, but in my own personal experience, having tried to negotiate NEPA, it's really, really hard and it's much easier to do through the regulatory process and I think that's what we would see.

Julia Pyper: Great. Brandon?

Brandon Hurlbut: I mean, it's clear this administration passed the most important piece of legislation on climate in the history of the world. Common law would keep that going and do more. Trump wants to repeal it, he said that. Calls it the Green New Scam, does not believe in any of this, so I think the stakes could not be higher both on climate and just the future of this country, and so people need to get involved. This community, our listeners, if you care about this, we mentioned Camila Thorndike, I've worked with her in the past. She's amazing. I'm so glad she's over there. Go to go.kamalaharris.com/climatevoters and you can get involved. You can get plugged into a battleground state. You can go do GOTV. They have apps you can do relational organizing from your computer in those states with people that you know. So there are ways for our listeners to be activated in these last few days to help in this election that is going to determine the future of this country.

Julia Pyper: Even your responses are interesting in how Emily had a more logistical business-minded rational, here's how the pieces are going to play out.

Emily Domenech: I'm a lawmaker, baby.

Julia Pyper: And Brandon's like, "Grassroots, mobilize, get the hearts and minds," but I love it. Thank you both for weighing in and let's turn now to our next segment. How can lawmakers learn from Hurricanes Helene and Milton? The catastrophic storms killed at least 250 people, resulted in over $250 billion in damage and left millions without power or running water. Helene additionally maintained extraordinary force even as it hit Asheville, North Carolina, nearly 400 miles from the ocean. And we talked in the past about how climate forces may be intensifying like this. These storms exposed and amplified a handful of striking challenges facing the country as extreme weather events become more frequent and intense, and we're going to unpack a few of them here. So first, FEMA spent $9 billion in the first week of this fiscal year, and that was before Milton even made landfall. Extreme weather events are not going away. So what do you both see as the best pathway here to ensure the government can actually fund relief efforts like this in the future? Are these going to bankrupt us? Emily, what do you think?

Emily Domenech: So just a quick explainer here, we typically provide this kind of aid for disaster relief through the Disaster Relief Fund, which is a... It's an interesting way of funding where we basically provide forward appropriations in advance of disasters and we get an estimation from FEMA that says, "Hey, we think we're going to need X amount of money to deal with the disaster relief season. Please, Congress, give us that money," and then they spend it down until it runs out. It's one of the few things that isn't tied to the fiscal year, so it doesn't disappear at the end of the fiscal year. They can continue to spend out of the DRF as long as it's available. The problem with that, and this is something we've seen happen over and over and over again, you mentioned the fact that FEMA had already spent 9 billion, about half of what the 20 billion that gets obligated here, FEMA and the way that we have calculated this money, it tends to be a little bit more disconnected from the actual volatility of a disaster season than I think it should be.

So FEMA gives its estimates for how much it'll need for the DRF nine months in advance of hurricane season. That makes it really tough for us to make estimations about what kind of response we're going to need. We've seen some recent changes in the way that we calculate the requirement for our disaster response. FEMA uses a different formula of cost estimates with this 10 year rolling estimate that it uses to calculate how much money it's going to need. That's probably something that needs to be revisited. The one thing I'll say, though, is that we often hear about, "Oh, the DRF is going to run out of money and we're not going to be able to respond to these disasters." And Congress has, every single time that it needed an additional appropriation, provided those funds. It's simply because we have a system where we forward fund something, it will eventually get low and FEMA will have to tell Congress they need more money. That's been the standard process.

I will say, I think that frankly, we need to look at this a little bit more... When we do our original budget request from FEMA, we need to say, "Hey, let's think about what we've seen in the past five years where we have seen our response costs be higher than they've been the past. Let's make sure we're accounting for that as we do our budget requests so perhaps we don't run out of money quite as quickly into hurricane season." But it's something that we've had a problem with for quite some time because of how FEMA does this calculation.

Julia Pyper: And you mentioned briefly that in the lame duck there will be some disaster assistance response. What do we expect Congress to do?

Emily Domenech: I expect them to reload the DRF with the amount that FEMA says it needs to get through the hurricane season. Speaker Johnson already said that they would do a disaster package when Congress returned. President Biden requested this fund. We've gone through all the steps we need to do in order to get this process moving. FEMA has the money to get us through the election, certainly to when Congress comes back in the lame duck meeting those immediate needs and will reload it. This is a very standard process. It's something we've done many, many times.

Julia Pyper: Just to get through 2024, though, to be clear? It's not like it goes further into the future.

Emily Domenech: Well, it would be through the fiscal year.

Julia Pyper: Okay.

Emily Domenech: So through to our next annual appropriations.

Julia Pyper: Brandon, what do you make of our ability to fund the resilience efforts that are evidently needed nowadays? Sounds like we've got bipartisan agreement to prioritize this, but I guess what does it signal to you and how we keep affording this?

Brandon Hurlbut: I want to make a broader point, then I'm going to connect back to this topic. The broader point is we talked earlier about why is climate not a bigger part of what's on voters minds at the polls? And I think that's because we have not had this Sputnik moment. When we were in the space race against the Russians and we had to win it, the Russians got to orbit first with Sputnik and it freaked out the country, and so we went all in to win the race. When I worked for Secretary Chu, we were saying a dozen years ago, the Sputnik moment is here on clean energy. China is moving fast. They're trying to own this market. We need to get into this race, but it hasn't totally landed even at this point. And I think there's a couple of ways that the Sputnik moment could happen.

One could be on EVs. If you look at Brazil, Stellantis, which used to be Chrysler, owned most of the auto market in Brazil. Now the Chinese have entered it with these amazing EVs that are cheap and awesome, and Stellanus' market share went down dramatically. So that could happen here if we let these Chinese EVs compete. Ford is terrified of how far they've advanced on this technology versus us. The other Sputnik moment could be insurance and what's happening with these extreme weather events because at a certain point, how was this going to be sustainable?

And once upon a time, many moons ago, I was a corporate lawyer and I was on the financial services and insurance team, and I thought insurance was super boring, but I did learn of how foundational it is to our economy. And if we simply cannot make these payments and have the reserves, that could be a moment that causes so much grief and challenges that it forces people to deal with climate more. It becomes more top of mind because how are we going to deal with property insurance if these insurance companies are leaving these states because it's just unsustainable to be able to afford these extreme weather events?

Julia Pyper: And that plays in some very local and real ways for individual families. So Florida, for instance, hit by these storms. FEMA, as I understand it, has this 50% rule. So you can only get compensated up to 50% of the value of your home before the disaster hit. So what do you do as a homeowner? Your options are basically I think officially to relocate the structure, which is really challenging to do, move your actual home outside of a floodplain. That's very expensive. Demolish the structure or elevate the building to a height determined by local officials. All of that, really expensive. When the value of your home has been radically undermined and insurance plays into that, you may not even be able to get home insurance for that structure going forward. So some people are just saying, "I got to walk away from my $500,000 home in full. Maybe get some insurance money for the lot." Some folks are quoted in the media saying, "I'll get some insurance recuperation," but what a massive economic hit to your family. So this is really local for people and really hits you in the heart.

Brandon Hurlbut: At Overture, we have invested in a company called Floodbase trying to deal with this issue. And what Floodbase is doing is they have ground sensors, satellites, all of this data that they accumulate to be one, the source of truth on did a flood happen? Two, having better flood maps and being more predictive because we talked about these estimates. FEMA is often wrong. There's better data out there from these really innovative companies like Floodbase.

And then what they can do with that data is they can create insurance products like parametric insurance, and that is where you're paid based on the outcome. So you don't have to have a claims adjuster come in and do all this and wait several months. It is like, did the thing happen? And you get paid a set amount. So it's like for earthquakes, it'd be like if there's an earthquake above five, you get X amount of money that you agreed on no matter what. And so here it would be like they know if the flood happened, boom, and you have an agreed upon payment. And so it's a different type of insurance that they're trying to innovate on. So we are looking at this space very closely because there's a lot of innovation happening.

Emily Domenech: So I want to pull on this thread a little bit, the idea of approaching things in a different way. We talked about this a little bit in our last episode, but I think there is a real disconnect between our disaster response and our mitigation and rebuilding efforts. And oftentimes, we don't quite have that same cohesion between those agencies, like say FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers or frankly even coordinating with things like how do we deal with insurance and reinsurance for these folks who are rebuilding? If we're not thinking through what we needed to mitigate as we rebuild, we're going to be in the same position the next time around and it's going to cost more because we know that we have inflation that's going up, so the cost is going to be higher. So thinking about ways to change that regular order of business to make these agencies work better together in a more efficient way is really interesting.

In fact, I love that I'm talking about such Louisiana-heavy issues with my former Louisiana ties, but Garrett Graves who joined us on this program has a long-standing proposal with a Democrat from Florida, Jared Moskowitz, to bring FEMA and the Army Corps under an agency head in a new federal disaster and response and mitigation agency. So there's some creative ideas out there about how we change these frankly disconnected efforts and make them more efficient and take advantage of technologies like the ones Brandon mentioned to make sure that we're doing a better job of responding and being prepared for the next time.

Julia Pyper: Emily, do you think that restructuring would help address some of the challenges around people running into that 50% of losses, a threshold under the National Flood Insurance Program? Do we need to revise that or do you think more process changes, better data, better technology can solve it? Or are there more core principles as to how the government responds that need to be adjusted?

Emily Domenech: I think some of it is one, how do we make sure that if we are rebuilding, we're doing it in a way that is more resilient? That needs to be step one. That's part of those, if you participate in NFIP, that's something that is required as you look at that process. I also think are we really in a position where we think the federal government needs to subsidize 100% of the rebuild for someone who's rebuilding in a floodplain? I'm not sure. That's not an answer that my Louisiana friends would like because they want to keep rebuilding in the same place as they have been. But is that a good use of federal money when perhaps, it would be better spent helping somebody build a more resilient property in a new place?

So I will note... And this is a complicated issue and it's why we've seen Congress do 31 short-term extensions of NFIP, as opposed to reform or restructuring this program. It's a tough nugget and I think frankly, it will require quite a bit of bipartisan work and it's very regional, so it's something that it's much easier to kick the can down the road on rather than reform and rebuild this program. So it's a big lift and I won't disagree with you that I don't know that it really is the right solution, but I'm not sure the government covering 100% of the cost for rebuild every time we have a disaster is a good solution either.

Julia Pyper: Right. Given that we know, unfortunately, there's a chance of that cost again.

Emily Domenech: Let's be smart about what we do.

Julia Pyper: That's adaptation, right? But we got to make sure that those folks are also, I think, done right by.

Emily Domenech: Taken care of, 100%. Yeah, I think it's very much a question of how do we make sure, again, that we're connecting this disaster response, disaster mitigation and adaptation efforts. Those three things should be connected when we're talking about a natural disaster so we don't put ourselves back in the same position where we're rebuilding the same home.

Julia Pyper: All right, we'll leave it there. As always, we're now going to wrap up with our rapid-fire segment, The Mark-up. For anyone tuning in for the first time, at the end of the show, Emily, Brandon and I each bring a story, anecdote, or observation to discuss and debate. Let's see what we've got this time. Brandon, you're up first.

Brandon Hurlbut: I wanted to highlight a piece in Foreign Policy that was written by a former colleague, Jason Bordoff, who runs climate at Columbia University. And the title of the article is “America's AI Leadership Depends on Energy,” and it's a really thoughtful piece that highlights a few things that we've been talking about on the show and some that we should talk about more. One is how to incentivize more energy-efficient semiconductor chips. Another thing is permitting, Emily's favorite. Highlights Manchin-Barrasso, also talks about the need for utility business model reform, a top issue in our industry that we could be talking about more here as well. And then stronger federal efforts to reform the regulatory system for nuclear energy is discussed, and as well some diplomacy across the world. So it's a really thoughtful piece that raises a lot of topics that we have been discussing and some more that we'd like to spend more time on.

Julia Pyper: We'll leave it there in the interest of time. I can go next and give Emily the last word. So my piece is called “Unfinished Business, The Bipartisan Appeal of Distributed Power Plants” at RAND and Utility Dive, and it was authored by former FERC Chairs, John Wellinghoff, who's a Democrat and Neil Chatterjee, who's a Republican. And this election, they're actually seeing from their vantage point, a remarkable amount of alignment on energy, affordability and reliability and I think you pointed that out earlier in this episode, Emily. And so this issue brought together two of these heavy hitters in the FERC world, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, who actually oversees a lot of the way our power system works. And they're making the point that there's this FERC Order 2222, which is a significant step to opening access to distributed energy resources to wholesale markets.

The problem is only one of those wholesale market providers has actually put together plans for it. So their point is that the extent to which 2222 will be utilized and successful in supporting our grid and providing affordability and resilient solutions will really depend on the next grid operators and policymakers of all political stripes, and they actually need to leverage it. So elevating from the election cycle and what energy is good and bad, just saying, "Let's just get to work. Let's recognize we have a common appeal here to have more affordable and resilient energy, and let's make sure 2222 is best leveraged to do that."

And there's actually a bill introduced in Congress that would require faster action from those wholesale market providers to actually follow up and take use of that tool. So a little bit wonky at the end of the day, but I thought it was a nice coming together of two leaders in energy on different sides of the aisle just to say, "Let's get to solutions that work and have those nuts and bolts policies actually leveraged to have the outcomes that we want for a better energy system." With that, pass it to you, Emily.

Emily Domenech: So mine's not nearly as bipartisan or fun, but my Mark-up for today is a letter from 150 environmental groups urging the EPA to stop permits for carbon sequestration following the reports of a leak at a facility in Illinois. I think this is a bit of a dangerous game here, where if we say, "Hey, CCS is offline. We should make it really, really difficult to permit carbon storage. It will have a really hard time decarbonizing some of our heavy industry." And so it's an interesting twist where it's like, "Hey, do we want to deal with the emissions and deal with them in a way where we've had frankly long-term success, or do we want to pretend that those emissions don't matter?" I will note that we have plenty of folks on the left who are pretty supportive of carbon management, like the Breakthrough Institute or others who have written a lot of good reports here. So if you're looking for information on the success rate for carbon management and the amount of wells that EPA is actually, actually permitted, Breakthrough would be a good place to look.

Julia Pyper: All right. With that, we'll have to leave it there in the interest of time. We will certainly be back after the election with a lot to unpack, although as we discussed, we may not know the full extent of the results, so we'll do our best to unpack what we know. We'll try to get some good guests on to figure out what it all means and where it's all going from here. But for now, everyone get out and vote, whoever you vote for. Thanks so much for listening. That's it for the show.

Political Climate is a co-production of Latitude Media and Boundary Stone Partners. Max Savage-Levinson is our Producer. Sean Marquand is our Technical Director and helped us out with this show. Stephen Lacey is our Executive Editor. You can get all of our show notes and transcripts at latitudemedia.com. And if you want to talk to us about a specific topic, please email us at politicalclimatepodcast@gmail.com. Thanks for some of the feedback we've received recently, and please feel free to help spread the word about Political Climate on LinkedIn, X, and beyond. I'm Julia Pyper. We'll catch you again on the other side. See you in a few weeks.

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