President Donald Trump's administration has gutted US climate policy. Yet even as wildfires, record heat waves and flooding hit communities across the country, Democrats are keeping quiet about global warming on the midterm campaign trail.
Instead, candidates are packaging climate policy as an affordability issue, stressing how Americans are struggling to afford gas, groceries and to insure their homes against climate-fueled weather extremes.
Take Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico in Texas, who represents the party's best chance at winning the race in the Republican stronghold in nearly 40 years. Though he makes some mention of climate change on his campaign's "energy and environment" page, that is not his focus.
His pledges center around lowering energy costs, providing emergency relief for spiking utility bills, making data centers pay for their own grid upgrades and growing energy sector jobs.
This aligns with analysis from nonprofit news organization Inside Climate News showing that the Democrats have dramatically reduced mentions of climate change in their press releases and campaign messaging.
The Trump administration has pushed back against renewables in favor of fossil fuels, but rooftop solar is gaining popularity with US homeownersImage: Mario Tama/Getty Images"We've entered an interesting space where climate policy doesn't need to be called climate policy to be climate policy," Max Frankel, executive director of the SEEC Institute, a nonprofit that helps guide climate policy in Congress, told DW.
What would a Democratic win mean for climate policy?
Most forecasts project Democrats winning the House and a narrow majority in the Senate in the November 3 election. But without control of the White House, passing any legislation will be difficult and almost any climate policy will have to be a bipartisan endeavor, say analysts.
Given that and the Democrats messaging-shift to affordability over climate, few experts expect a fully resurrected Inflation Reduction Act. Introduced under the Democrats to create incentives for building clean energy projects, the legislation was largely decimated by President Trump's major tax law.
But Democrats may try to bring back some climate-friendly IRA provisions, particularly measures aimed at lowering household energy costs, analysts told DW. Those include incentives for home energy-efficiency upgrades and appliances like heat pumps to replace oil and gas heaters that typically help bring down household energy bills.
Politicians could also expand an IRA manufacturing tax credit for solar, batteries, and critical minerals that largely survived. One bipartisan bill proposes extending it to include nuclear fusion components.
"It's not going to be anything at the scale of the IRA," Adrian Deveny, founder of Climate Vision, a policy firm dedicated to decarbonization, told DW. "It's like singles and doubles as opposed to a home run, which is still worth doing."
A first bipartisan test over building infrastructure
In a rare area of agreement between the parties, some Democrats and Republicans are already backing a reform bill they're hoping to pass before a new Congress is sworn in January.
If enacted, the bill could make it significantly easier to build major infrastructure projects in the US, including long-distance transmission lines that carry electricity between regions but that currently take years to build because of complex permitting rules.
US turns its back on EVs
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"The biggest beneficiary of building more transmission will be wind and solar power, because the best and cheapest way to generate wind and solar energy tends to be far away from cities," said David Spence, a political scientist at the University of Texas who researches the politics of energy regulation. "And so, they need transmission to get their product to market."
But environmental groups say the bill could also speed up the approval of fossil fuel projects.
If Democrats win big in the midterms there might be some "peeling off their support for that bill because they think they can do better in the next Congress," said Spence.
Looking to the 2028 presidential elections
Major new federal climate legislation is a long shot before the 2028 presidential election. And afterwards it would likely require Democrats winning the White House, the Senate and the House. While no 2028 platforms have been released yet, policy experts expect a few ideas to feature prominently.
One is data centers. Opposition to the energy-guzzling infrastructure being built en masse to power the AI boom is mounting across the country. Half of Americans are now against data centers being built close to their homes, according to a pollfrom news outlet Politico.
"I'm sure every candidate is going to have a platform with a focus on data center constraints on some level, as a way to address affordability," Deveny, who led negotiations on the IRA, said. "And that's the entry point for climate policy."
There are several ideas currently circulating — including a proposal by Democrats Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to pause data center construction — as well as ending tax breaks for data centers and imposing new taxes on their electricity use.
Wind energy has taken a hit under President Trump, who has incentivized energy companies to cancel offshore wind leasesImage: Steve Helber/AP Photo/picture allianceDemocrats may also seek to restore the IRA's clean energy tax incentives. This year, more than 150 legislators co-sponsored the so-called Energy Bills Relief Act designed to reinstate IRA clean energy tax incentives, reform how transmission permits are granted, and make data centers pay for the grid upgrades they need. The bill is unlikely to pass anytime soon but offers a window into what Democrats might support.
"By far, the biggest consensus — to the extent there's anything remotely resembling a consensus — is restoring a lot of the clean energy tax incentives from the IRA," Deveny said. "Not everybody supports that but it is a highly supported idea amongst most congressional Democrats."
Support for other proposals include a new federal program to help insurers cover climate-driven disasters and bring down hefty premiums, as well as so-called climate superfunds. This would require fossil fuel companies to contribute to the costs of damage caused by extreme weather and adapting to the risks of climate change.
Vermont and New York both passed legislation to create funds, although a federal judge blocked New York's.
The 2028 presidential race is expected to begin a few weeks after the midterms end, bringing a fresh round of policy ideas and debates. A new president typically gets to drive the legislative agenda in the beginning of their term if their party also wins Congress.
"As long as the consensus is that clean energy is the cheaper source of energy, and it's going to provide stability over the long term for high energy costs — there's a million ways you can propose solutions through that lens," Deveny said.