Tim Walz Sets Ambitious Environmental Goals Amid Political Shift

August 15, 2024

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by Evrim Ağacı (The Pinnacle Gazette) The Minnesota governor’s policies aim for sustainability and innovation as he tackles climate issues head-on, signaling potential changes on the national stage. -- ... His progressive environmental stance and innovative policies have sparked discussions about sustainable aviation fuel and climate change.

Walz's commitment to green initiatives is palpable, particularly his support for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), which is seen as pivotal for the aviation industry's effort to reduce emissions. Aviation, currently responsible for about 3% of global emissions, is projected to climb to 22% by 2050 without substantial changes.

The Governor of Minnesota has emerged as one of the leading voices advocating for SAF, and his administration recently signed significant tax credits aimed at encouraging its development. He envisions Minnesota becoming a global leader in this burgeoning market, equipped with all the necessary components, including refineries and top-tier airports.

Just last year, he announced the launch of the Minnesota SAF hub with the backing of major players like Delta Airlines and Xcel Energy. This initiative positions Minnesota front and center as it aims to scale up SAF production to meet rising demands.

While sustainable aviation fuel is derived mainly from plant oils and waste fats, the industry still faces skepticism about its long-term viability. Critics argue whether the fuel can genuinely supply enough to meet airline needs and concern about its real climate benefits.

Walz's progressive transformation as he transitioned from House representative to governor has many scratching their heads. The narrative surrounding his environmental record is mixed; having once voted for the Keystone XL pipeline, Walz now champions significant climate legislations.

During his tenure as congressman for Minnesota’s 1st District, he focused on issues more aligned with agriculture and veterans' affairs than with hard-hitting climate agendas. Colleagues remarked on his limited impact on climate policy during those years, with not many recalls of his environmental achievements.

Yet, advocates assert his growth reflects broader changes in political priorities rather than mere personal evolution. Once seen as straddling the fence on environmental issues, Walz is now recognized for actively tackling climate challenges head-on as governor.

His leadership has seen Minnesota implement some of the nation’s strictest vehicle emission regulations and establish ambitious goals for clean electricity and net-zero emissions by 2040. This shift has garnered praise from environmentalists who see Walz as now embodying the leadership necessary for tackling climate issues.

The Inflation Reduction Act incentivized sustainable aviation fuel production through tax credits, significantly supporting Walz's push for greener energy. Yet, the looming expiration of these credits raises concerns among producers about future gains.

Environmentalists, on the other hand, have raised red flags about the pair of powerful forces backing Walz and their potential to alter the existing agricultural and energy landscapes. There’s tension surrounding the risks of SAF affecting food production, as new shifts could favor corporate agricultural interests over smaller, independent producers.

Critiques of Walz often reference his history of supporting fossil fuel projects and legislative initiatives beneficial to conservation projects funded through expanded oil and gas drilling. These actions sparked questions about his commitment to the strict environmental advocacy he espouses today.

While many have expressed doubts about Walz’s initial environmental records, his recent policies appear to have brought him back to the forefront of climate conversations. Colleagues from his congressional days have acknowledged his evolution alongside the shifting demands of his role.

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He voted with progressive causes about 75% of the time, which is somewhat low for Democrats, yet his advocacy for biofuels and renewable energy remains noteworthy.

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Throughout Walz's evolution, he has also championed nuclear energy, reaching out for collaboration on breaking the gridlocks stalling its adoption. READ MORE

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Tim Walz’s Bipartisan Approach to Agriculture and Conservation -- The Minnesota governor and vice presidential candidate will still have to answer climate groups’ concerns about his support for ethanol and factory farming. (Civil Eats)
Biden-Harris climate law set off a green bonanza in Walz’s Minnesota -- Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed a law mandating utilities provide 100 percent clean electricity in the state by 2040. (Politico Pro)
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What Walz can tell voters about climate jobs (Politico's Power Switch)
Harris Goes Light on Climate Policy. Green Leaders Are OK With That. (New York Times)
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Excerpt from Civil Eats: During his six terms in Congress, Walz was a member of the House Committee on Agriculture, where he was instrumental in ensuring that soil conservation measures made it into the 2018 farm bill. At the time, the farm bill—the massive piece of legislation that guides the country’s nutrition and farm policy—failed to acknowledge agriculture’s role in contributing to climate change, and barely hinted at its potential role in slowing it.

Walz, who spent his early years working on his family’s farm in rural Nebraska, found a political work-around of sorts. That year he introduced the Strengthening Our Investment in Land (SOIL) Stewardship Act, which boosted existing farm conservation programs and incentivized farms to adopt certain practices that improve soil health, ultimately making soils better able to sequester carbon.

“Even as short a time ago as 2018, the word ‘climate’ does not appear in the farm bill,” said Ferd Hoefner, who was policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition at the time. “He made soil health, through the SOIL Act, the acceptable thing one could talk about when one was trying to talk about climate mitigation through agriculture.”

Hoefner noted that the last time the term climate change appeared in a farm bill was in 1990, an indication of just how polarized and partisan the issue has become in farm policy debates since then. After that, it “was verboten to even mention the word,” he added.

The provisions of the SOIL Stewardship Act were ultimately included in that year’s farm bill. Farm policy observers also point to one of Walz’s biggest farm-related accomplishments, which was introducing bills in 2014 and 2018 that help small-scale, veteran and beginning farmers access credit and funds for land, equipment and crop insurance. Provisions of these bills made it into the final versions of those years’ farm bills.

The Land Stewardship Project, based in Minnesota, has long pushed against the trend of increasing consolidation in agriculture, which has seen the rise of ever-larger farms, mostly run by large corporate entities. This week the council applauded Walz’s record of working against this ongoing shift.

“What we’ve seen through his time in Congress and his time in the governor’s office is that issues around the future of agriculture and rural communities aren’t partisan—they cut across political lines,” said Sean Carroll, policy director at Land Stewardship Action, the organization’s political arm. “Many bills he’s co-sponsored or led are about creating a future for rural communities where we can keep more farmers on the land, where we can allow farmers who are stewarding the land to succeed and make money.”

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Walz has had to balance the economic interests of his farm-heavy state with the climate and environmental issues caused by the agriculture industry, which generates about $26 billion for the state annually. Much of that money comes from emissions-intensive forms of agriculture, including concentrated animal feeding operations that, in Minnesota, primarily raise hogs, or row crop farms that grow corn for ethanol. Minnesota is home to 19 ethanol refineries.

“Gov. Walz is the perfect choice to serve as Vice President Harris’ running mate,” said Geoff Cooper, CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association. “He brings Midwestern pragmatism and sensibilities to the ticket and would ensure rural America’s ‘flyover country’ has a strong voice in a potential Harris administration. Dating back to his days in Congress, Gov. Walz has always been a passionate and effective advocate for renewable fuels and agriculture. He has a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing the ethanol industry.”

Ethanol is facing increased criticism from environmental groups that challenge the purported climate benefits of corn-based fuel. Some research says ethanol’s carbon footprint is greater than that of gasoline.

But in corn-producing states like Minnesota, questioning ethanol spells political death, and Walz has had to tread a bipartisan path. In 2020, Walz, along with three Midwestern Republican governors, appealed to the Trump administration to reject the oil industry’s attempts to exempt small refineries from being required to blend biofuels into their mixes. (One of those Republicans, Kristi Noem of South Dakota, said Walz was “no leader” and called him a “radical” on social media Tuesday.)

“On biofuels he’s indistinguishable from all the other Republicans and Democrats in Midwestern states,” Hoefner said, “which is bowing at the altar of almighty corn.” READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico's Power Switch: For Democrats trying to convince voters that climate policies can create jobs, Tim Walz offers them a reason for hope.

As Minnesota governor, Kamala Harris’ running mate wrangled hundreds of millions of dollars from President Joe Biden’s climate law with the aim of reducing his state’s greenhouse gas emissions, boosting clean energy and generating jobs, writes Adam Aton.

His strategy: signing a law mandating 100 percent clean electricity in the state by 2040, filling state agencies with policy experts to win the federal cash, updating the state’s permitting rules to speed up green projects and pressing companies to hire local labor, write Josh Siegel, Catherine Morehouse and Kelsey Tamborrino.

Among other results, Minnesota secured one of the biggest climate grants the government has ever awarded a single state — $200 million to cut agricultural pollution — and went from using about 20 percent local labor for new clean energy projects to regularly employing 50 to 70 percent.

“I don’t think there’s anywhere in the country with better alignment between labor and climate-solutions folks,” said Kevin Pranis with the Laborers’ International Union of North America in Minnesota and North Dakota.

Minnesota is competing for climate and energy cash against more-populous neighbors such as Ohio and Michigan, as well as low-tax, low-regulation Sun Belt states such as Georgia and South Carolina. It has still managed to score $410 million in announced federal grants from Biden’s climate law through mid-June, in addition to the $200 million grant to reduce agriculture pollution and a $214 million conditional loan guarantee for a plant that will make chemicals from biomass.

Republicans have dismissed the aid recipients as “pet projects.” But supporters such as Democratic state House Majority Leader Jamie Long say Walz’s ambitious pragmatism helped him make clean energy a winning issue.

Walz worked with unions, utilities and other energy industry players to craft climate policies that were politically palatable. For example, he passed state subsidies for heat pumps and implemented new building codes to nudge new construction away from gas appliances — but never proposed phasing out gas (an apparently politically explosive option).

Not to mention, he’s personally involved.

Walz is “the type of person that calls you from his cellphone number, and the number is not hidden so you see ‘Tim Walz’ popping in on your phone,” Martin Pochtaruk, CEO of Heliene, which manufactures solar panel components in Minnesota, told Josh, Catherine and Kelsey. READ MORE

Excerpt from New York Times: Gina McCarthy, President Biden’s former climate change adviser and a former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said activists are not demanding more details on climate from Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz because they each have well-known accomplishments. As vice president, Ms. Harris cast the tiebreaking vote for the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate investment in United States history. Mr. Walz signed a law requiring Minnesota to get all of its electricity from wind, solar and other carbon-free sources by 2040.

“Nobody’s worried about how many times she talks about climate change,” Ms. McCarthy said, calling Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz “climate champions.”

As senator from California, Ms. Harris cosponsored the Green New Deal, a nonbinding resolution that called for a transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy this decade. The Harris campaign hasn’t said whether she still supports the Green New Deal, and has emphasized that her climate focus is on implementing the Inflation Reduction Act.

During her 2019 presidential run, Ms. Harris positioned herself to the left of Mr. Biden, calling for a fracking ban and a tax on carbon pollution, as well as changes to federal dietary guidelines to encourage less meat consumption. She did not advocate those positions once she became Mr. Biden’s running mate and then vice president.

A spokesman said Ms. Harris no longer supports a fracking ban.

Mr. Trump has mocked climate science and has promised to repeal regulations designed to cut greenhouse gases, and he has attacked Ms. Harris on energy based on her 2019 positions. This week he told attendees at a rally in York, Pa., that “there will be no fracking” in the state “or anywhere else” if she wins the White House. Pennsylvania is the second-biggest producer of natural gas- after Texas.

Harris campaign officials have said that the vice president and Gov. Walz have focused in recent weeks on introducing themselves to the American public and haven’t avoided climate change. In speeches in Arizona and Nevada, Ms. Harris remarked that citizens there had firsthand experience with climate-driven extreme heat and drought.

“You know the climate crisis is real,” Ms. Harris said in Las Vegas this month, adding, “but Donald Trump, well, he claims it’s a hoax.” READ MORE

Excerpt from Bloomberg/Yahoo! Finance: The last-minute presidential campaign of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz is giving Democrats a surge of enthusiasm that could help the party win some down-ballot races in the Republican stronghold of Iowa, said Tom Vilsack, a former governor of the farm state.

“Iowa actually in this cycle has a tremendous opportunity,” Vilsack said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. Vilsack, the US agriculture secretary, spoke in a personal capacity in the interview on Wednesday because he’s in Chicago attending the Democratic National Convention.

The influence could spread beyond Iowa, he said. Harris choosing Walz, the Minnesota governor, as her running mate helps bolster the profile of Democrats in critical rural areas the party has had a tough time winning in the last several election cycles, Vilsack said.

Walz, a former US representative from a conservative congressional district in Minnesota, should help attract Democratic votes in small towns across key battlegrounds like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona, Vilsack said.

“This is a guy who can talk rural, and I think that really matters,” he said.

Walz has more broad appeal than Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, the running mate of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, according to Vilsack, who in 1998 became the first Democrat elected governor of Iowa in three decades.

In Iowa, renewed energy among Democrats should help the party deliver a couple of victories in the state for US House candidates, Vilsack said.

Since 2000, Iowa in presidential elections has voted Republican half the time and Democrat the other half — the last being Barack Obama in 2012. The state is currently considered safe for Trump in November, according to the non-partisan Cook Political Report.

Vilsack also touted the administration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris in making substantial investments in clean energy.

“This opens up a whole new set of opportunities in rural places that can impact and effect farm income but also can help create jobs,” he said. READ MORE