In nearly every speech, J.D. Vance, the Republican hopeful for U.S. vice-president, drums home that Americans are being duped by the Democrats’ fixation on the low-carbon economy and their wild spending on what Vance calls “green scams.”

“We need a leader…. who rejects Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s Green New Scam and fights to bring back our great American factories,” he belted out at his nomination speech at the Republican National Convention in July, drawing exuberant cheers.

Vance calls Democrats’ environmental focus “crazy.”  

“Kamala Harris cares more about climate change than about inflation,” he wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this week.

Vance has also criticized the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, for supporting “garbage energy” after pledging last year his state would get all its electricity from wind, solar and other carbon-free sources by 2040.

In contrast, Vance and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump are all-in on increasing oil and gas production. 

“Unleash American energy! Drill, baby, drill,” Vance has said. 

If Trump retakes the White House, he has vowed to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, a key pillar of Biden’s legacy, which promised with other bills to inject more than a trillion dollars into green energy investments and incentives. About one-third of the money is earmarked for tax breaks for things like clean energy manufacturing, electric vehicles and home upgrades.

Trump has called them “meaningless Green New Scam ideas,” as he and Vance frame climate spending as a wedge issue in this election campaign, saying it will come at the expense of jobs and Americans’ hard-earned money. 

That’s resonating with many voters in Butler County, Ohio, Vance’s base.

“I think it’s a money grab for the politicians. They’re using climate change as a way to put money into certain businesses,” said Jack Ellis, who owns an auto body shop, while enjoying a summer music festival in Butler County earlier this month. “You know, it’s taking money from us, we’re taxpayers.”

For his first campaign stop as VP nominee, Vance chose Middletown, his hometown, a city of about 50,000 people where steel remains critical to its survival. 

“Middletown, I love you … and I will never forget where I came from,” he said. He also warned that good factory jobs are at risk with the Democrats’ climate agenda.

“I just want to say to Middletown and a lot of forgotten communities all across our country…. they think that we’re backwards…. They think that we don’t know how to do anything,” he said. But “this is where things are made, this is the source of America’s greatness.”

But the Trump-Vance narrative is risky when the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and other Biden-era bills are projected to create hundreds of thousands of jobs, and much of the green investments are going to Republican districts — including the steel plant in Middletown. 

Major decarbonization investment

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has said that the IRA and a federal infrastructure law will lead to 33 projects, many in Republican counties, that will collectively get $6 billion in federal funding. 

Calling it “the largest single industrial decarbonization investment in American history,” she said these projects “are going to slash our [CO2] emissions by 14 million metric tons per year.”

More than half a billion dollars was allotted to retrofit the Cleveland-Cliffs Middletown Works steel plant, which will help it retire a high-carbon-emitting blast furnace and replace it with two electric ones. The aim is to not only bring down its CO2 emissions, but make it more competitive.

According to the U.S. Energy Department, this process would create 170 new jobs and 1,200 in construction while stabilizing the existing 2,500 jobs at the plant. 

When she announced the investment in Middletown this spring, Granholm said “what you do here in Middletown, we will be looking at how we can replicate that in places all across the country.”

Billie Bowermaster, secretary treasurer of the local Laborers International Union, said the Cleveland-Cliffs retrofit is “going to be huge work for this county and for our members.” 

“We try to tell them at our union meetings every month, where the money’s coming from, who’s on our side, who has our backs, that you know, the Biden-Harris administration got it done,” Bowermaster said, while acknowledging that at least half of their members back the Republican ticket.

Jeri Lewis, a local resident, says stable industrial jobs are “vital … [and] at the root of who Middletown is,” she said. “It’s important that we grow that industry here, that’s huge for our city.”

Lewis was on the fence about supporting Trump in the election, but she knows the Vance family, and with J.D. on the ticket, she said she’ll vote Republican. 

Longtime resident Judy Murray is excited about returning Trump to power, with help from Vance. 

“He’s a hometown boy, and I think he’s going to help Trump tremendously. He’s just what we need,” said Murray, 81, as she picked up Trump lawn signs earlier this summer, promising to pass them all out in her Middletown neighbourhood. 

Republican pushback

But Trump is facing headwinds over his attacks on climate and infrastructure investments — even from within his own party. 

Since the Inflation Reduction Act passed two years ago, 325 new clean energy projects have been announced across the country, according to E2, an environmental research group. Much of the investment has been sprinkled across red and swing states.

WATCH | Vance talks about Biden’s ‘green scams.’ But his hometown got a major climate investment:

The clean energy investments and tax credits are indeed creating jobs. So much so that a group of 18 Republican lawmakers sent a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson this month asking any future Republican administration not to dismantle all of the Biden-era climate policy, as the funds are reaping political rewards in Republican counties.

“We hear from industry and our constituents who fear the energy tax regime will once again be turned on its head due to Republican repeal efforts,” the letter said. “A full repeal would create a worst-case scenario where we would have spent billions of taxpayer dollars and received next to nothing in return.”

Despite the buy-in from some Republican lawmakers, environmental and climate advocates are worried that Trump’s re-election could imperil the future rollout of green investment. The majority of the promised funds have not yet been invested, and less than 17 per cent of direct investments in climate, energy and infrastructure has been actually spent as of April, according to an analysis in Politico.

Like many other deals, the Cleveland-Cliffs steel plant project is still being negotiated with the U.S. Department of Energy. 

“An administration that was intent on rolling back the progress that we have made … could set that back,” says Ted Fertik, vice-president of manufacturing and industrial policy at the BlueGreen Alliance, an organization of unions and environmental groups united to fight climate change.

“We do think there is a lot at stake in this election, and a distinct possibility for some very promising developments to be severely, if not completely reversed,” he said.

Union head sees positive transition

That message is faint, however, as polls consistently show Americans know little about the Inflation Reduction Act and even less about its potential job creation.

Tim Burga, president of the Ohio AFL-CIO union, says the state has a long history of mining coal and making steel. His own grandfather worked in the coal mines. 

“There’s a historic connection, there’s an economic connection, with coal and fossil fuels,” he acknowledged, but also said there has to be “a transition into a green energy economy.”

The key is putting workers at the heart of that transition. “It’s got to be a way that takes care of those people and the generations that have given their lives to move America’s economy forward,” Burga said.

“I feel like the policies of the Biden-Harris administration, especially on energy, [are] being done the right way.”

It is a battle for the future, and some people, like first-time voter Cole Miller, 21, are torn.

“I’m kind of uneven about it, because Democrats are for unions and I work in a union. So I mean, if a Republican Party gets on the job of president, you never know what’s going to happen,” he said.

“Beliefs-wise, I’m definitely a Republican, but you kind of gotta pick your livelihood compared to your beliefs,” Miller said. “It’s sticky.”