Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected Wednesday to share his vision for the US energy sector, one that is likely to target President Joe Biden’s ongoing efforts to fight climate change.
The Republican presidential hopeful has also signaled that he may use the occasion to clarify his past opposition to ethanol subsidies, an issue of concern to farmers in the critical first nominating state of Iowa and one that has sparked divisions between DeSantis and his 2024 GOP rivals.
Teasing the announcement during a Tuesday appearance on Fox Business, DeSantis said his proposal would “get rid of” electric vehicle mandates championed by Biden and roll back other policies that he said benefit rival countries like China and Venezuela.
It’s not clear what policies DeSantis would put on the chopping block, but the Biden administration earlier this year proposed new car pollution rules that could lead to electric vehicles accounting for two-thirds of new car sales by 2032. DeSantis has been critical of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which included a nearly $370 billion clean energy and climate package – the largest climate investment in US history.
DeSantis is scheduled to roll out his latest policy proposal in Midland, Texas, a city in the heart of the Permian Basin so intertwined with its oil- and natural gas-rich economy that its motto is “Feel the Energy!” Following the event, DeSantis will stay in Texas for fundraisers in Midland, Houston and Dallas, according to a senior campaign official.
With Texas’ oil industry as his backdrop, DeSantis is likely to advocate increasing domestic energy production. It’s a familiar refrain from Republican critics of Biden, though US oil production is poised to rise to an average of 12.8 million barrels per day this year for the first time, according to federal estimates.
“We want to give people relief at the pump. Gas is almost $4 a gallon nationally,” DeSantis said Tuesday. “In 2025, we’re shooting for $2 a gallon, and that means you’ve got to let people do their jobs.”
While DeSantis on the campaign trail has often pushed for more fossil fuel production across the country, in Florida, he has fought to put guardrails on energy companies to protect his state’s environment.
DeSantis on his second day as governor in 2019 signed an executive order that directed the state’s Department of Environmental Protection to “oppose all off-shore oil and gas activities off every coast in Florida and hydraulic fracturing in Florida.” He threatened he would “be raising Cain” if then-President Donald Trump opened Florida’s coastal waters to drilling, warning that an oil spill there would have a “cascading effect” on his state’s economy. In 2020, his administration purchased 20,000 acres of Everglades wetlands to permanently protect them from oil drilling.
“I will continue to fight every day for the Everglades and Florida’s environment,” he said at the time.
DeSantis, though, seemed to distance himself from his environmental streak earlier this year, telling reporters that “people have kind of misconstrued” what he has done in Florida and attributing his anti-drilling position to Floridians who enshrined such protections in the state constitution.
“That’s something that we honor. That is not saying that I think that should apply to Louisiana or Texas and all that, so that will continue,” he said at a campaign event in New Hampshire. “We’re a coastal state, we’ve had oil spills. We’ve put that in the constitution, our voters did, and that’s something as governor that I followed and respected.”
DeSantis has also faced questions from Iowans about his energy record, particularly his past opposition to ethanol subsidies. As a congressman in 2017, DeSantis co-sponsored a bill to eliminate the federal renewable fuel standard, which mandates the blending of biofuels – most often corn-based ethanol – into US transportation fuel. Iowa is the country’s leading producer of corn, more than half of which is used to make ethanol for fuel.
Trump has seized on DeSantis’ past efforts to end the renewable fuel standard as he seeks to drive a wedge between the Florida governor and Republican caucusgoers in Iowa. At the Iowa State Fair this summer, Trump’s campaign handed out flyers highlighting DeSantis’ past position on ethanol and claiming that the governor has been “fighting for years to kill every single job supported by this vital industry.”
DeSantis campaign spokesman Bryan Griffin previously dismissed those attacks as “further evidence of (Trump’s) eroding support in Iowa.”
“Iowans increasingly know that Governor DeSantis is the presidential candidate who shares their values,” Griffin said.
But DeSantis has largely dodged questions from Iowans about ethanol, promising he would have more to say when he introduced his energy agenda.
Ethanol, DeSantis said in August, “will be a part of our energy policy, because it’s American made energy that’s produced, that supports American jobs.”
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