Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris’ newly-announced running mate, has pushed aggressive climate and green energy policies during his tenure as governor.
In 2023, Walz signed a law requiring that 100% of energy produced or acquired by the state must be carbon-free by 2040, a timeline that is even more aggressive than California’s 2045 deadline to reach 100% green energy generation. Major environmental groups — including the Sierra Club, Climate Power and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Action Fund — have already come out in favor of Walz, calling him a “climate champion” and implying that he will pursue policies that transform the American economy by pushing it away from using fossil fuels.
“Governor Walz has never seen a California-style energy policy that he didn’t try to emulate in the state of Minnesota. First and foremost, that’s what’s on the table,” Isaac Orr, the vice president of research at Always On Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “He pretends to be this affable Minnesota dad who wears buffalo plaid, and it’s a bait and switch, and then you get the most progressive policy possible … If you thought the Biden-Harris administration was bad, the Harris-Walz administration will be worse.”
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Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom was the state’s lieutenant governor when his predecessor signed California’s green energy requirements into law in 2018, and he oversaw another legislative package filled with “groundbreaking measures” to reach the 2045 carbon-free electricity target. California’s mandate requires 90% green energy generation by 2035 and 95% by 2040 to meet the 2045 goal of 100%, while Minnesota’s package aims to have 80% of all electricity sold to utility customers be carbon-free by 2030 before increasing over 5-year intervals to reach 100% by 2040, according to the Minnesota Commerce Department.
In 2019, Walz proposed a budget for 2020-2021 that would have seen the state’s gasoline tax increase by 20 cents per gallon over time, though that specific proposal was not adopted as part of the budget that he ultimately signed into law. That same year, Walz also inked an executive order to establish a sub-cabinet within his administration focused on climate change and overseen by a board of citizens, according to The New York Times.
Walz’s administration also hitched Minnesota to California’s “Advanced Clean Cars I” rules, which are designed to drive up the percentage of car sales that are electric or zero-emissions models starting in model year 2025, according to the California Air Resources Board. He also approved hundreds of millions of dollars of new electric vehicle (EV) subsidies to further entice Minnesotans to adopt EVs, according to Drive Electric Minnesota.
In 2023, Walz signed over 40 climate-related initiatives into law, as he boasted on X — formerly known as Twitter — on multiple occasions. Additionally, in 2020, Walz’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute and three Koch Industries entities for allegedly misleading the public about climate change. Harris pursued similar litigation as the attorney general of California.
For her part, Harris reportedly “loved” Walz’s record as a governor in Minnesota, which was one of the key factors in her choice to pick him as a running mate, according to Politico. Harris has endorsed hardline climate policies in the past, including banning fracking and imposing carbon taxes, though she has walked back her support of a fracking moratorium.
The Harris campaign did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
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