In Nevada, Clean Energy Divides the Senate Race

In November’s election, Nevadans will vote between two U.S. Senate candidates with vastly different climate and energy positions—particularly regarding solar energy, an issue that has even divided climate and environmental advocates in the state.

Incumbent Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Democrat and Nevada’s junior senator, has consistently backed legislation supporting the renewable energy transition and pro-climate policies, like the landmark Inflation Reduction Act, and has fought against tariffs on imported solar panels. 

Her Republican opponent, Army veteran Sam Brown, has said the construction of solar and wind farms across the state would ruin the state’s landscapes and is “not for the benefit of Nevadans,” while touting former President and current Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s “drill, baby, drill,” slogan in support of promoting domestic oil and gas production. 

This election cycle, the Silver State is yet again a key battleground state, along with Arizona, Michigan, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where Democrats hope to hold onto Senate seats in ultra-competitive races. A single loss would set up a divided and gridlocked government even if Vice President Kamala Harris wins the White House in November. 

Flipping the Senate would have major implications for passing legislation to address climate change. If Democrats lose both the White House and the Senate, meanwhile, it could allow Republicans to reverse the climate wins of the Biden administration, like the hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy tax credits delivered by the Inflation Reduction Act. Trump has vowed to repeal it if he’s elected. 

Also vulnerable would be rules from federal agencies promoting the use of public lands managed by the federal government for renewable energy development and conservation, which Republicans have pushed back on. Such rules are of huge importance in Nevada, the state with the highest proportion of federal public lands in the country.

Polling has consistently shown Rosen in the lead in the Senate race, with Harris also leading recent polls in the state, though with smaller margins than the Democratic senator.

“Nevada is leading the nation in building a robust clean energy economy, which is creating new good-paying jobs and lowering costs across my state,” Rosen said in a statement to Inside Climate News. “While my extreme MAGA opponent Sam Brown would rather bash clean energy to score political points, I’m working to jumpstart Nevada’s energy future in areas like solar and geothermal so that we can continue this growth and improve people’s lives.”

Brown fell short in the 2022 Republican primary for Senate in Nevada after moving to the state from Dallas in 2018 and has never held elected office. In speeches across the state, he has adopted an energy policy rebuking Rosen’s positions and focused his campaign on addressing inflation and highlighting his military service. In Afghanistan in 2008, his Humvee struck a roadside bomb, leaving him permanently scarred. 

“We have solar fields being built across the state right now, on our land. Not for the benefit of Nevadans but for the energy policies of [California Gov.] Gavin Newsom,” Brown told KTVN 2 News Nevada last year in an interview announcing his campaign. “That power is going directly into California. We need someone who will be an advocate for us here.”

Brown has previously said he would not have supported the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law or the Inflation Reduction Act and has proposed cutting federal agencies that cover the same issues as state agencies, like the Department of Energy. And he has been hammered on all sides for comments he made in 2022 about his willingness to allow nuclear waste to be stored in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain—a third rail in Nevada politics for decades—but has since backtracked from that position. Brown’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. 

Climate, environment and renewable energy advocates alike are supporting Rosen’s reelection bid, even though they sometimes fall on different sides of environmental fights within the state. 

“When the environment needed someone to stand up for it, very often Jacky Rosen was there,” said Patrick Donnelly, the Nevada political director for the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, the environmental group’s advocacy and political arm, noting his organization can often be at odds with the senator. 

Few states are seeing the impacts of climate change more profoundly than Nevada, with Las Vegas—where most of the state’s population lives—on track to have its hottest summer on record. The state has long been known as the driest in the union, a fact that’s only growing truer in recent decades, with the Southwest experiencing a megadrought and the city of Las Vegas having to impose drought mitigation measures years before other large cities in the region because of its limited water supply. Reno and Las Vegas are the fastest-warming cities in the country, but both continue to grow rapidly in population. And in recent years, the state has seen record-breaking wildfire seasons.

“Nevadans are feeling the brunt of climate change already and we can expect that to get subsequently worse in the years to come,” said Olivia Tanager, the director of the Sierra Club’s Toiyabe Chapter, as she watched smoke from nearby wildfires outside her home in Reno. “The heavy-hitting climate issues in the state are certainly at the top of most people’s radar.”

One of the biggest issues Tanager hears every day from chapter members is the “nexus between conservation and solar,” with “a lot of members who are concerned about how rapidly solar is being deployed.” But, she said, Nevadans are already seeing the effects of “extreme heat, drought and wildfires and all of the other aspects of climate change, and so broadly recognized the need to transition away from fossil fuels. And a large portion of that is solar and solar deployment.”

Rural stretches of the Mojave and Great Basin deserts are seeing a surge of proposals and construction of large solar farms, to take advantage of the region’s abundant sunshine and the chance to export solar energy to neighboring states. The industry is becoming a major driver of the state’s economy, which has the highest number of solar jobs per capita in the nation and is on track to have 28,000 jobs in the industry by 2028. That’s in large part because of the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, said Stephen Hamile, the chief operating officer of Sol-Up Solar and board member of the Nevada Solar Association. The legislation is allowing Nevadans to lower their energy costs, creating more jobs in the industry and giving the state the opportunity to export energy to other states.

“Sam Brown is deeply opposed to solar energy development and would have been a major roadblock to major solar investments,” Hamile said. “If he is in [the Senate], unfortunately, he’s so divisive with regards to solar energy and [climate issues], you have basically a regressive energy policy that would ultimately harm Nevadans.”

Nevada is also home to a new mining boom for lithium, the metal vital for creating the batteries needed for electric vehicles and storage of electricity from solar and wind farms. The state has the only operating lithium mine in the U.S., with others likely to come online in the coming years, despite being highly controversial for their environmental and cultural impacts. 

That’s because roughly 80 percent of Nevada’s land is public land overseen by the federal government, which has the final say on its best use—such as for mining or for solar farms. The Biden-Harris administration has consistently presented public lands overseen by the Interior Department as a vital part of the solution to climate change, providing the space needed for massive solar and wind farms, new mines for critical minerals like lithium and copper, conservation programs to offset carbon emissions and more experimental solutions like carbon storage projects and geothermal plants, which are also being proposed in Nevada. 

With its abundance of public lands, critical minerals and sunshine, Nevada is seeing firsthand both the drawbacks and benefits of the nation’s pivot away from fossil fuels—making the energy transition and climate change both critical issues in the state’s Senate race. 

At the local level, the surge of developments near rural communities can be divisive. The town of Beatty, two hours northwest of Las Vegas, is facing a surge of proposals for new gold and lithium mines, utility-scale solar operations and transmission lines to send the energy they generate to major urban areas. Erika Gerling, chair of the town’s advisory board, said the community has focused on developing its economy around recreation and ecotourism, given its clear skies, wide-open spaces and proximity to Death Valley National Park and Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge. She said residents and the board are worried about how the proposed projects will impact the local community and have opposed many of them. 

“We’re not against energy or solar in any way,” she said. “We are opposed to the location of these projects.”

It’s an issue she could see influencing voters in rural places like hers, though the town itself does not weigh in on political matters. Environmentalists and clean energy advocates recognize the importance of addressing such concerns going forward. But they say Rosen recognizes those challenges, has worked with local communities on them before and is familiar with public-lands issues. Whether now or later, advocates say, Nevadans’ concerns over addressing climate impacts will likely outweigh some of the other concerns that make up Brown’s stance.

“We aren’t looking to have solar fields in every spot in our backyard,” said Kristee Watson, executive director of the Nevada Conservation League. “But at the same time, if we don’t do this now, we’re not going to be able to support human life in this state.”