Donald Trump’s decision to choose Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate likely fortifies the former president’s reputation as the pro-oil choice for voters.
Vance, who Trump named Monday as his pick for vice president, is a strong supporter for drilling and hydraulic fracturing. He has also criticized renewable energy sources like wind, expressed doubts that human activity is causing climate change and painted President Joe Biden as a threat to U.S. energy — even as the country produces record amounts of oil and gas.
“The Biden administration is doing everything it can to subsidize alternative energy sources and demonize our nation’s most reliable sources of power,” Vance wrote in an August op-ed in Ohio’s Marietta Times that championed the state’s oil and gas resources.
Since entering Congress in 2023, the Ohio Republican has repeatedly backed oil and gas interests — and railed against the Biden administration clean energy policies that are delivering big economic gains to the Buckeye State.
The oil and gas industry spent more than $283,000 on Vance’s 2022 election campaign, more than all but 18 other members of Congress, according to the campaign finance website OpenSecrets.org. Officials from the Ohio-based Artex Oil contributed $27,000, ranking the company fifth among all of Vance’s campaign contributors, while the global commodities trader Vitol SA ranked 20th. Artex and Vitol officials also contributed to Vance’s Leadership PAC, “Working for Ohio,” as did Marathon Petroleum.
Vance could influence the political calculus in Pennsylvania, one of the country’s largest energy producers and home to a large swath of the Marcellus Shale. Trump has made clear that he’s eyeing the Midwest in picking Vance, saying in a statement that the vice presidential candidate’s campaign focus would be on “the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American Workers and Farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota and far beyond.”
Mike Chadsey, spokesperson for the Ohio Oil and Gas Association, said Vance is “somebody who understands kind of what we do and how we do it.”
“He’s gonna continue to be an advocate for the industry, and energy investment, helping make sure that those issues stay at the forefront; those concerns become voiced in the White House” if Trump wins, Chadsey said.
Vance’s positions on energy line up with those of Trump, drawing sharp criticism from environmentalists who say the Republican ticket would likely stymie the country’s clean energy growth. At the conservative Turning Point Action conference last month, Vance called wind turbines “hideously ugly” and echoed Trump’s claim that they “kill all the birds.”
“J.D. Vance is Donald Trump’s dream come true — a climate denier who is all too happy to do Big Oil’s bidding and pad their profits at the expense of working people,” Lori Lodes, executive director of advocacy group Climate Power, said in a statement. “We cannot allow an out-of-touch, pro-polluter ticket to win in November.”
Vance has championed hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” a technique that shatters rock with chemicals and water to release oil and natural gas from tight shale formations. Key to production in shale regions like Ohio, fracking is opposed by environmentalists who point to its potential to pollute groundwater with toxins.
“Ohioans are lucky to live on top of the Utica Shale oil and gas basin,” Vance wrote in his August op-ed. “New technologies like horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have allowed us to unleash these abundant natural resources.”
Fossil fuels, EVs and solar tariffs
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Vance’s energy priorities. A Vance spokesperson also did not respond for comment.
But Vance’s Senate record has earned him a zero on the League of Conservation Voters’ scorecard, which weighs lawmakers’ votes on legislation to address climate change and environmental degradation.
Last year, Vance co-sponsored the “Power Act,” S. 319, which would order the president to seek Congressional approval before delaying leasing or permitting for oil, gas and mining on federal lands. He also co-sponsored the “STOVE Act,” S. 244, to block federal agencies from issuing rules that would ban gas stoves and other appliances. The Biden administration has not banned gas stoves, but Republicans were critical of Department of Energy efficiency standards for appliances that were finalized this year.
Vance has been outspoken about protecting domestic manufacturing, including for clean energy. He co-sponsored a measure last year to overturn the Biden administration’s suspension of tariffs on Chinese solar components, saying the president’s policies would hurt American workers.
But Vance also introduced a bill last year that would repeal the federal tax credit for electric vehicles. Titled the “Drive American Act,” S. 2962 would instead offer tax credits for U.S.-made vehicles powered only by gasoline or diesel.
“While most Americans want to drive a gas-powered car, the Biden administration pursues a policy explicitly designed to increase the cost of gas. They do this in the name of the environment, but all they’re doing is enriching the dirtiest economy in the world at the expense of auto workers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan,” he said in a statement last September, referring to China.
Vance has said he would like to get rid of much of the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s landmark 2022 climate law. But like many red states, Ohio has seen economic gains from the law’s provisions — and Vance owns stakes in companies that have benefited from Biden’s climate spending programs.
Vance recently told POLITICO’s E&E News that if some local companies support certain provisions, lawmakers might want to keep them instead of repealing the entire law.
“The Inflation Reduction Act is mostly a lot of green energy stuff,” he said. “And I think it’s made our economy less energy independent.”
Megan Jacobs, a spokesperson for the League of Conservation Voters Victory Fund, said Vance espouses the “same mix of extreme rhetoric and Big Oil talking points we already hear from Trump.” She pointed to his supportive comments of Project 2025, a policy blueprint for a potential second Trump administration spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation and partly written by former Trump appointees.
“Vance is cosigning this power-hungry takeover and is willing to put Big Oil’s wish list ahead of the health and safety of families and communities across the country,” she said.
Climate change flip
Vance became a polarizing national figure in 2016 when he released his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” about growing up in southwestern Ohio.
Fans of the book praised it as a portrait of escaping generational poverty in one of the poorest regions of the United States through education. Its detractors, however, accused Vance of ignoring the social ills plaguing the Appalachian region, including a history of environmental and economic damage from mining industries.
At the time, Vance was a critic of Trump, who was making his first presidential run.
“I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy,” Vance said in an interview with Charlie Rose that year.
Vance’s position had flipped by the time he ran for office in 2022. The former venture capitalist ran on an avid pro-Trump campaign and decried “woke” social movements and environmental, social and governance investing. Vance called ESG — wherein financial institutions weigh environmental risks and sustainability in investing — a “massive racket” from Wall Street that costs jobs in America’s heartland.
Vance has also switched his tune on climate change since being in the public eye.
Vance told an Ohio State University crowd in 2020 that “we of course have a climate problem in our society.” At the time, he placed some blame on China’s greenhouse gas emissions, but also said the U.S. lagged in switching to other energy sources and called solar energy the “biggest improvement in emissions.”
Two years later, amid his rise in the Republican Party, Vance began expressing doubt about human-driven climate change. (Scientists have established that burning fossil fuels is the main driver of global warming.)
“Even if there was a climate crisis, I don’t know how the way to solve it is to buy more Chinese-manufactured electric vehicles,” he said in a conversation with conservative radio hosts Clay Travis and Buck Sexton.
Meanwhile, Vance has excoriated the Biden administration for the clean energy policies and tax breaks that are landing some new jobs-producing projects in Ohio. Climate Power, which supports Democratic candidates, says the Inflation Reduction Act has so far produced nearly 14,000 jobs in the Buckeye State.
A mapping of new clean energy projects in the U.S. by E2, another clean energy advocate, shows major projects underway in Ohio, such as a$3.5 billion project to produce lithium batteries for electric vehicles. On top of a range of EV and battery projects, the federal government is also underwriting a new clean steel plant in the state run by U.S. steel giant Cleveland Cliffs.
The Trump campaign is pledging to cut taxes for fossil fuel producers. The former president is also vowing to leave the Paris climate agreement and cut federal subsidies for clean energy technology. That all falls under Trump’s pledge to “drill, baby, drill.”
The Republican National Committee platform, meanwhile, points to “crippling restrictions on American Energy Production” and calls for the U.S. to be the “dominant energy producer in the world.”
“MAKE AMERICA THE DOMINANT ENERGY PRODUCER IN THE WORLD, BY FAR!” the platform says.
The U.S. produced more crude oil last year than any country in history. It also is producing and exporting record volumes of natural gas.
Reporters Tim Cama and Christa Marshall contributed.
