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.” 

Vice presidential candidate and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz campaigned in Las Vegas ahead of the presidential debate on Tuesday.

Walz arrived in Las Vegas on Monday evening and made a stop Tuesday morning at the Park Towers at Hughes Center for a fundraiser, where he said Vice President Kamala Harris will show the American people that she’s ready to be president at the debate Tuesday night.

“Let’s just all be very clear, this is the most qualified person who’s ready to do this job,” Walz said. “I think all of you tonight will get an opportunity to see that.”

Coming from a stop in Reno where wildfires are raging in the Washoe Valley, Walz said there is a sense of neighborliness that comes through in Nevada as firefighters work to combat the fire.

“Those folks up there were serving their neighbors,” Walz said.

Democratic Party operatives turned what was going to be a rally into a collection point for people to bring in things for those who have been displaced, he said. Helping people is “why you do this work,” he said.

“It’s a challenge. Folks are out of their homes, some folks have lost everything they had. Those are things that we work together to get done,” Walz said.

Harris’ running mate also highlighted the need for getting out the vote and that the margin between the two candidates is razor thin. He said the last election was won with about 40,000 votes spread over some battleground states, including Nevada.

“We know, if we win here, the path for Donald Trump becomes much, much more difficult,” Walz said. “The same goes for Georgia and North Carolina. These are pivotal states.”

Polls have shown Harris and Trump are neck-in-neck, but that Harris has lost some momentum from the initial boost of voter enthusiasm when she launched her campaign this summer. Walz called for the need to take that momentum and use the campaign resources to transfer the momentum into voter contact.

Walz also repeated the main talking points of the Democratic party about what is at stake in the election, highlighting the need for affordable housing and the need to protect abortion care.

“When do you get to be in a state where a small number of votes and the work that the folks in this room are doing could make the difference between what we don’t even want to imagine with Donald Trump getting back into the White House.”

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Contact Jessica Hill at jehill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @jess_hillyeah on X.

RENO, Nev. (KOLO) – Minnesota Governor Tim Walz arrived in Reno about an hour off schedule.

This is his first visit to Northern Nevada as Kamala Harris’s running mate.

Washoe County is the purple county in the purple state of Nevada, in his limited time here he needed to make a solid impression.

His first stop, Washoe County Democratic Headquarters.

Standing room only here to see the Governor; but at the front of the room something different.

Organizers here had put the word out to bring items for those impacted by the Davis Fire. Within a matter of hours water, baby items, and snacks came pouring into the office on Terminal Way.

Walz told the group, this is what community is all about, helping neighbors in times of need.

“Turning this office into… that is what it is all about,” Governor Walz told the group. “Campaigns and politics are a means to the end. The end is a better, fairer society where all of us take care of one another.”

Initially his visit here in Reno was to take on a much different tone.

A rally was scheduled at the Grand Serra Resort on Monday afternoon. But in light of the fire which has impacted thousands of northern Nevadans, it just didn’t seem appropriate.

And Walz was ready with a message that fit the situation at hand.

“To make sure we have the ability show that value; the ability to collectively work together. The idea there is value in that,” said Walz.

He spent only a few minutes here with party faithful.

His next stop was to firefighters who are helping put out a fire that has proved formidable to local fire agencies.

For approximately 45-minutes, this is where Walz chose to spend most of his time. As a governor he understands what crews can be up against. He himself has declared state of emergencies.

He talked to as many personnel as he could from firefighter to chief, even being handed a baseball hat and t-shirt.

“I think we are just grateful he came by and showed his support, and it was really important to us,” said Adam Mayberry with Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District. “You know he shared some stories about fires that he has experienced in Minnesota.”

Walz didn’t come empty handed, pizzas were brought in as a thank you from the Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee.

Walz said he would return to the Truckee Meadows, soon.

Hopefully at a time when the community isn’t having to look over its shoulder for the next evacuation order.

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