Describing coal as “clean” in the Republican Platform was a poor decision, Jay Faison, founder and CEO of clean energy firm ClearPath, said Wednesday during a panel discussion hosted by Politico on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. “I think we have to be realistic,” according to Faison, a self-described lifelong conservative. “I don’t think calling coal clean without explaining is a great political move. I’m not sure I agree with that exactly, but I think it can be, and I think we need to work towards it.”
The Republican Party on Monday issued a highly pro-coal platform, which defines the fuel as “an abundant, clean, affordable, reliable domestic energy resource.” The platform also boasts party support for all fuel sources but says they should be supported by the market without subsidies. “We support the development of all forms of energy that are marketable in a free economy without subsidies, including coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear power, and hydropower,” the platform says, later stating, “[w]e encourage the cost-effective development of renewable energy sources — wind, solar, biomass, biofuel, geothermal, and tidal energy — by private capital.”
Clean coal technology, a concept that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said he “loves,” gets a nod in the platform: “We urge the private sector to focus its resources on the development of carbon capture and sequestration technology still in its early stages here and overseas.”
The platform does not do enough to establish a Republican clean energy policy, Faison said: “People want solutions. I think it’s OK to say we don’t like what the left is bringing, but my point is: what are we bringing?”
Faison emphasized the need for “solutions,” but would not go so far as to say that climate change is the problem needing a solution. “We don’t need to agree on the problem to agree on the solution. By talking about climate change we get sucked down into a trench warfare situation that has been pretty unproductive for the last 10 or 15 years,” he said.
According to focus groups conducted by ClearPath in Ohio, Faison said, less-than adequate support for clean energy is an issue that could cause the GOP to lose many voters. “Clean energy is the No. 1 peel-away issue among these voters, meaning when you test who they’re voting for and what turns them away from that, more than immigration, more than jobs, more than national security, clean energy is No. 1,” he explained, adding that voters don’t trust the GOP when it comes to energy. “There’s a lot of things about trust. There’s a lot of things about how are we influenced. Do we toe the party line? Are we independent? Are we doing what’s right for Ohio? This is what comes out of our focus groups. These aren’t my ideas.”
Just coming up with solutions while not acknowledging the problem is not sufficient, Jai Chabria, managing director at public strategy firm Mercury and until a recently senior adviser to former presidential candidate Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio), said during the panel. “Most people believe that climate change is happening,” he said. “That’s not to say that there are not people out there that have some legitimate thing on the other side, but most people would say that it is. The millennial generation firmly believes that there is climate change. We have to accept those realities as a party and … we’ve got to come up with solutions here. We can’t be the party where nothing gets done, that’s why we’re in the state we’re in right now.”
Of the four-member panel consisting of Faison, Chabria, Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), and Karen Alderman Harbert, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy, only Kramer was willing to say that he would vote for Trump.
Harbert declined to answer the question while Chabria said definitively that he would not vote for Trump.
Faison said he first wants to see policy out of the campaign. “I’m going to hold to my principles, I just, I think this is big stuff and we can’t just go along to get along. We have to have real policy,” he said.
