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Podcast
Columbia Energy Exchange

What’s Shaping GOP Energy Policy?

September 2, 2025
Guest

Carlos Curbelo

Former Member, U.S. House of Representatives

Transcript

Carlos Curbelo: The work that I’ve tried to do with different organizations is to depoliticize this issue to help people understand, you know what? There’s abortion. There’s the Second Amendment. Even issues like immigration. I can see how those are culture issues and fit neatly into this left versus right dynamic. Energy abundance does not belong there. It doesn’t belong there.

Jason Bordoff: The rollback of the Inflation Reduction Act through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act has reshaped America’s climate and energy landscape by cutting tax incentives for wind and solar power and electric vehicles, while maintaining some federal support for sources like nuclear reactors and geothermal plants. While there is some uncertainty about how those policy changes will play out, there are even broader questions about what this all means for the Republican Party’s energy policy agenda and approach to climate change. So where’s the party headed and what could bipartisan cooperation on energy policy look like in today’s Washington? Can Republicans and Democrats still find common ground on issues like climate adaptation, energy security, or permitting reform, and what is shaping the Republican Party’s approach to energy policy?

This is Columbia Energy Exchange, a weekly podcast from the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. I’m Jason Bordoff. 

Today on the show, Carlos Curbelo. Carlos is a former member of the US House of Representatives. He served Florida’s 26th Congressional District from 2015 to 2019. During his time in Congress, Carlos was a leading Republican voice on climate policy, co-founding and co-chairing the Bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus. After leaving Congress, Carlos served as a distinguished visiting fellow right here at the Center on Global Energy Policy. He has co-founded Vocero, a communications and strategic consulting firm based in South Florida. 

Carlos joined me to discuss the current state of Republican thinking on energy and climate policy. We explored whether there’s still room for bipartisan cooperation in an increasingly polarized Washington. We talked about what he sees as the path forward for addressing climate risks, particularly in his home state of Florida. Carlos also shared his thoughts on how energy policy has become entangled in culture war politics, and what it might take to restore a more pragmatic approach. I hope you enjoy our conversation. 

Carlos Curbelo, former distinguished visiting fellow here at the Center on Global Energy Policy. It’s great to see you again, my friend. Thanks for making time to be with us.

Carlos Curbelo: It’s good to be with you. Thank you. It’s hot in Miami and I think it’s not as hot in New York, but it’s definitely hot in terms of our country’s politics, that’s for sure.

Jason Bordoff: And we’ll talk about that. You want to just take a moment and tell people kind of what you’re doing now that you’re out of politics and back in Miami?

Carlos Curbelo: Sure. So we have a firm based out of South Florida. We do a lot of public relations work, some policy work, doing plenty of media work with NBC Universal, trying to share some sincere and sober perspectives every once in a while on television, just to keep people a little grounded during some very dynamic times. So yeah, life is good. People ask me if I miss Congress and I say not really. I did a little bit at first, but not anymore, even though I do enjoy seeing some friends on either side of the aisle from time to time when I’m in DC.

Jason Bordoff: Yeah. I’m curious, your take on DC now in multiple respects. You were elected what, a little over a decade ago as a Republican member of Congress who prioritized climate change, gun safety, immigration reform with pathways to citizenship. That sort of sounds like…

Carlos Curbelo: A hundred years ago.

Jason Bordoff: Telephones with cords and Blockbuster video. Does that exist anymore? Could you get elected today? Talk about how things have changed in a decade.

Carlos Curbelo: I don’t know if I could get elected, and I know that I’m not going to try to find out, but look, I think Jason, things have gotten worse in terms of the willingness to collaborate, to compromise, to find middle ground on a lot of these issues. Our politics have become even more tribal, more aggressive, more divisive. But having said that, there are still good members on either side of the aisle who want to do the right thing, want to figure out a path forward that is more inclusive, not just what we’ve seen over the last decade or so where one party’s just trying to get a trifecta to push as much of their agenda through as possible, and then the next party comes in and tries to undo that. It just pushes the pendulum just as hard the other way. I think a lot of people understand that that’s not healthy for our democracy. They understand that that’s not how we became the greatest country and the greatest economy in the world. Stability is a big part of what our country has had to offer people from all over the world, from immigrants to investors, to corporations. But we’ve lost a lot of that, and I’m still hopeful that there’s a political renaissance somewhere that’s going to pop up on the horizon one of these days. We’ll see.

Jason Bordoff: What makes you hopeful of that?

Carlos Curbelo: Well, look, I think that even though we’ve become more and more tribal, I think people are realizing that there’s a better way to do things, and that while a lot of the old system was broken, that there was also a lot of good that came from the old system, right? I mean, talking about American politics post-World War II where there was more consensus, there was more respect, decency, collaboration in politics. I remember my dad, I grew up in the 80s and my dad is a Cuban exile, and he would always tell me even before I was interested in politics, but he would say the Americans, they do politics differently. They disagree, they debate, but then they shake hands and go to dinner or spend time together with their families, and then he would say, that’s not how it was in my country, which was Cuba.

Then of course, that’s not how it’s ever been in a lot of countries in Latin America and throughout the world, and sadly, we have moved in that direction, and I think a lot of people intuitively understand that that’s not good. I don’t think they know what the way forward is. I don’t think people know what type of leader can move us away from this dark and divisive politics. But yeah, I do think that the younger generations want a different future, a better future, one where people can actually debate, disagree, but then work together to figure out the best way forward.

Jason Bordoff: I mean, this dramatic, increasingly severe pendulum swing and inconsistency that makes it so hard for consumers, businesses to plan for. And of course you see that with tariff policy. You see that with energy policy like permits for projects that were already underway, and on the other side, I’m sure they would say this has been happening. This isn’t just about Trump, right? There was a permit for the Keystone pipeline and Biden took that away. 

Carlos Curbelo: That’s right. 

Jason Bordoff: And we’re going to gerrymander in Texas and like, well, the Democrats did it in Illinois. How much do you think this is about the person holding the White House today and how much does this just continue beyond him? And this is just about the parties becoming more and more extreme.

Carlos Curbelo: This is not about any one person. We have seen a breakdown in trust in our society that’s been growing for at least a decade. Our political leaders, our political system is in many ways a reflection of society. So the bad news is that we, the American people have created this situation. The good news is that we can fix it because we created it. We have agency. The people are still sovereign in this country, and there are politicians all across the spectrum that have preyed on people’s insecurities, on their distrust, on their skepticism, on their cynicism, so we can change it. I think people are waking up to the risks associated with this new politics, and I think we’re also due, and this happens from time to time where we get a transformational leader, someone that can really appeal to people’s better angels, inspire people, convince them, persuade them to walk in a different direction. So certainly that would help, but ultimately, we are the ones who have to decide if we want to continue electing people who will divide us and sow resentment and distrust in order for them to advance their political careers or to become wealthier or whatever it is that they’re trying to do. And we also need more people who aren’t afraid to lose elections. People are grasping onto power so desperately that it’s clouding their judgment, that it’s kind of pushing them to do whatever it takes to win, and that’s also pretty unhealthy.

Jason Bordoff: Is that something you see or hear with Republican colleagues who are saying something to you in private and doing things differently in public for fear of crossing this president?

Carlos Curbelo: There’s a great gulf between what members of Congress think and know and what they say and how they act. And again, it’s all across the spectrum. It’s certainly true of Republicans. There are a lot of people who are very worried there, obviously members of Congress who don’t like the fact that in many ways Congress is being pushed aside, right? You think about tariffs, you think about the administration’s spending decisions. I mean, this is all very clearly under Article One, and yet Congress is just a bystander. I think there are a lot of people who are frustrated with that. They are not willing for the most part, to speak up and to express these concerns out loud, and that’s an issue for sure.

Jason Bordoff: Do you see any reason to think that will change anytime?

Carlos Curbelo: Well, look, I think that we can all expect that this will be President Trump’s last term in office. We know that as a president approaches the end of a term. Even someone like Donald Trump who’s so influential and plays such an outsized role in his party, we can expect that people are going to start looking toward the future. And there’s a lot of uncertainty as to what the future means for the Republican Party. Does it go the JD Vance route? Does someone like Marco Rubio who’s more of a hybrid between the old and the new Republican Party become one of the leading voices? Is it someone who’s out there who we don’t even really know yet? So yeah, I do think that as this president’s time in office comes to an end, people are going to start looking ahead and maybe being willing to be protagonists in this movie that is the politics of our country. But here in the short term, I think that most Republicans are going to be operating in the shadow of President Trump.

Jason Bordoff: I want to mostly talk about energy and climate because you’ve thought a lot about it. You’re in Miami, which is being impacted by it. You led in Congress on it. Just on that one topic, since it’s in the news of what will happen with the Democrats who have fled Texas. And yes, both sides have done this before with gerrymandering, but mid-cycle, without a census with a clear open stated intent to do this for maximum political benefit does seem like taking it to a different level and just not good for our democracy. I’m curious if you agree with that and what you think the result of this will be as it gets pulled back or Texas does it, then California does it, and it just keeps going down a downward spiral.

Carlos Curbelo: This is going to be a race to the bottom. I think the only silver lining maybe is that it gets so bad that at some point in the future, both parties reach a truce, some kind of agreement so that we don’t have 52 Democrats from California and whatever it is, 40 Republicans from Texas and 29 from Florida, and however many Democrats Illinois could send to the US House of Representatives. Look, it’s really good when you’re a member of the minority and you can reach out to a colleague from your state who’s in the majority, who can help work with you on something that’s important to your state. I mean, that is very valuable. I served during the last two years of the Obama administration and during the first two years of the first Trump administration. When President Obama was in office, I would go to colleagues like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who we disagree on 80% of issues, but who I knew I could trust and who’s a good colleague to both Republicans and Democrats, and she helped me navigate the Obama administration and figure out how to help my district through her relationships when President Trump won.

I did the same for some Democrats in the Florida delegation. That’s very healthy. And look, there are a lot of issues that we can fight about, but then there are very important issues, life or death issues, natural disasters, situations where there’s a major crisis or catastrophe. Texas is kind of going through this with the floods they just went through where people actually have to work together because people’s lives depend on it because there are people who are suffering and you want to alleviate that suffering. So I really hope that this does not become a nuclear arms race with a big nuclear war at the end, that it does not become a race to the bottom. It’s shortsighted by Republicans. You’re starting to hear congressional Republicans from blue states speak up and demand that the Speaker stand up for them too, because they’re going to get wiped away if this moves forward.

And by the way, there are a lot of great members. Look at where you live in New York. Look at what a very small number of New York Republicans were able to accomplish for New York State. Whether you agree with the OBBB or not, they got significant tax relief for New York and New Jersey and other high income tax states. That wouldn’t happen if we go ahead and wipe out all the Republicans in New York and wipe out all the Democrats in Texas. So we go back to what I asked earlier, is this going to get better? I mean, it might get a little worse at first, but it has to get better. It is going to get so bad that people are going to wake up to that very sad and difficult reality.

Jason Bordoff: And just in the immediate impact, does it change your best guess on which party wins control in 2026 of the house?

Carlos Curbelo: Look, I think of course we’ll have to see which states do the redistricting exercise. Some are going to try, they may or may not be able to legally. We’ll see how that all shakes out. But Jason, if we look at the last 20 years, and it’s pretty obvious what happens when one party has a trifecta. The other party usually wins the House of Representatives, and oftentimes it doesn’t matter what the size of the incumbent party’s majority is, but in this case, I mean, let’s say Republicans do add five seats in Texas that grows their majority to eight seats. That’s not a big majority, right? In 2018, the midterm of Trump’s first term, we had I think about a 25-seat majority, and we lost 41 to Democrats. You remember in 2010, that was an epic red wave. So we know how these things go. The president knows how they go, and that’s why he’s trying to push Republicans to gain as much of an advantage as possible. But if history is any guide, Democrats have a major advantage. Even if Republicans pick up these five seats in Texas, and by the way, if they do that, that’s probably going to only energize the liberal base even more to turn out in other states, right? This is all going to be nationalized as most things are these days.

Jason Bordoff: You started the Climate Solutions Caucus, I believe. Remind people what that is. That also sounds like Blockbuster video or something. The idea that Republican members will come together, I think it’s still operating.

Carlos Curbelo: Unlike Blockbuster video, it still exists. It still exists, correct. And there are over 60 members of the house evenly split between Rs and Ds who are members of it, and there is a Senate Climate Solutions Caucus too. So the Blockbuster video is not quite a precise metaphor, but I know what you mean.

Jason Bordoff: Yeah. So that’s my question. How should people think about the ability? How do you see Republican members that want to engage on climate? Does that mean anything anymore? Is there any ability to work across the aisle on this issue? We’ll come to specific things like the OBBB in a moment, but should we think of the Climate Solutions Caucus as mattering anymore?

Carlos Curbelo: Let me tell you why Ted Deutsch and I – Ted Deutsch was a Democrat from the Palm Beach area – decided to launch that caucus back in 2016. I did not grow up an environmentalist. I mean, I had a pretty healthy environmental conscience growing up in Florida, the beach, the Everglades, but it wasn’t one of my top issues when I ran for Congress. It was never an issue of passion for me. I had a meeting with scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration early in my first term in Congress, and I saw the sea level rise projections for my district. I saw the historical data for sea level rise, and at that moment, I concluded that this issue had to be important for me. So that’s how I got into it. I didn’t have some dreams, some epiphany, no message from God, just a simple review of historical data and of the projections that professionals who do this for a living showed me and I represented the Florida Keys and the southern tip of Florida.

I’m like, okay, this is a big deal. So after that, I realized that not that Republicans were denialists because that’s what a lot of people think, but that there was just a great deal of apathy among Republicans. They didn’t know about the issue, they didn’t care about it. They had no political incentive to get involved with the issue. So that’s why we started the caucus, and we needed to start an organization inside the Congress, the first one ever that’s bipartisan and that wants to have a dialogue about climate change, extreme weather, flooding, all of the issues that we’re seeing people deal with all throughout the country. So that’s how it started. It swelled to 90 members. At the end of the 115th Congress, we had 45 Republicans, 45 Democrats. The caucus organized that Congress to defeat a couple amendments on the house floor. That was significant. And you asked me, does this matter today? Yes, it does matter thanks to a lot of the members who are in that caucus, both in the House and in the Senate. The OBBB is actually, and a lot of people don’t know this because so many of the headlines were bad, is the second greatest investment in clean energy in American history. Now, not that there’s a whole lot to celebrate because of course we have diminished the investment that had been passed under the IRA. It is certainly less than that.

Jason Bordoff: But the second biggest meaning most of what you’re talking about I think is like what was preserved.

Carlos Curbelo: Exactly.

Jason Bordoff: Okay. Just because the size of the original bill was so large, even if you take a lot of it away, you’re still left with a big number. Is that kind of what you’re…

Carlos Curbelo: Yeah, and we have to take into account that in April 2023, the official position of every House Republican because they voted this way, was to fully repeal the IRA. That was the starting point for House Republicans. If you take that perspective and you see where we ended up, it’s actually pretty significant and there’s still a significant and meaningful investment in clean energy post reconciliation, and a lot of House Republicans, a handful of Senate Republicans worked and invested political capital to make sure that that is the case. So it’s easy to be skeptical and cynical and pessimistic, but there are a lot of Republicans that come from districts where this issue matters. Moreover, Jason, this isn’t just about the environment anymore, as if that wasn’t important enough. It is, but this is also about creating jobs, investment, about fulfilling the country’s energy needs. You’ve written all about it.

Data centers, AI, growing power demand. We had flat power demand in this country for a long time. That is changing rapidly, and it’s not a matter of principle or environmentalism anymore. We really do need an all-of-the-above approach to this because otherwise we’re going to see soaring energy costs and that’s going to be bad for everyone. No one wants to see that. Right? And we know that today the fastest and easiest projects to build are renewables, wind and solar. Everything else takes longer. Can we correct that over time? Sure, but it’s going to take time. Would I love for us to be able to deploy SMRs all over the country today? Yes, and if we could, we really probably wouldn’t need wind and solar, and that would be perfectly fine. I don’t care.

This is not a matter of – this is not a religion. We have this challenge where we’re polluting the atmosphere and then we have this other challenge where we need more energy and not just for us, but other people throughout the world deserve energy security and deserve to grow and prosper the way we have. So we just need a whole lot more energy, and I think everyone has to take a pragmatic approach to it. A lot of people on the left who were adamantly opposed to nuclear for decades, they’ve woken up to how silly that was. Today we have some conservatives who think that wind and solar are bad for no clear reason. None of that makes any sense.

Jason Bordoff: Yeah. So there’s that. Just coming to your point about the Big Beautiful Bill, in your view, people don’t appreciate how much it did for climate. I just want to ask you about that climate part because as you said, we’re going to need to meet rising power demand, and so there was support for not just natural gas, but nuclear and geothermal. We’re thinking differently about competition, particularly with China. And so you want investments in domestic manufacturing for many things including say, batteries. But the idea that you would pull back support tax credits for EVs or for solar and wind and then put out, and I don’t want to paint with a broad brush, Republicans on the hill come in different varieties, different views, don’t necessarily show the views of those in the administration. But we just had a report come out from the Department of Energy and the Secretary of Energy went on social media to say that the idea that climate change is making weather more dangerous and severe is nonsense in his words. So that does at least raise the question of whether a lot of the things you are saying got preserved or got those investments that were made. These weren’t motivated by a concern about climate change. It was some other concerns about the economy and energy needs. Is that too unfair a way to think about it from, if you want to paint with a broad brush and think about Republican views on climate today?

Carlos Curbelo: Well, look, there’s a diversity of views on the hill and a lot of – you got to give these guys credit – the Freedom Caucus members really for them, this anti-renewables position is really dogmatic. It’s part of their religion, and they pushed the White House and they’ve pushed the administration aggressively to adopt some of these positions. I remind people, the president did not make a comment, a single comment about energy tax credits until very late in the process. In fact, he did not do it until a small group of House members went and kind of leveraged their votes to attack some of these policies and those members, again, I say you got to give them credit in the sense that they know how to use the levers of power and they are willing to blow up the whole process unless they get their way. I saw a lot of the centrist members, they’re nice, they want to collaborate, they want to get along, they want to try to find a way to accommodate everyone.

The members on the hard right, and maybe you could say this about the members on the hard left too, they really just push harder and oftentimes they get their way. But of course there are a lot of Republicans who care about climate change and who care about the environment. They wouldn’t be members of the Climate Solutions Caucus if they didn’t. And one of the reasons they do is because they represent districts where people care about this and they represent a lot of young conservatives who care about this and they need to build coalitions in order to win, right? They’re not in R plus 30 districts, so they actually need to work very hard to build a diverse coalition. So it is important to them. And again, a lot of these members invested political capital on the issue when on the record, wrote letters to their leadership, filed legislation.

A lot of House members encouraged and backed up the senators that worked to protect some of these incentives. Right now you have two senators, Chuck Grassley and John Curtis who are holding administration nominees over this issue. So yes, Republicans care. Now listen, do some of them care because they believe in energy security or the environment or both? You know what? My answer to that is Jason, who cares if people are supporting good policy, who cares why they’re doing it? God can figure that out one day. We just want good policy and we want our country to be successful. We want people to be able to get good jobs. We want people to have affordable energy. So how people get to the right place is really not that important to me.

Jason Bordoff: Can you say a little more about where you think this sort of ideology on solar and wind in particular came from? I agree with what you said a moment ago. We need more power generation capacity, AI as well as other things, industry and other growing electricity demand, backlog on combined cycle gas turbine plants until the end of the decade. Nuclear, if we’re lucky in the early 2030s. So solar and wind can and should play a pretty big role in that. But the idea that intermittent energy is unreliable, it has to be 24/7 to be real energy or solar wind takes up too much land that’s bad for the ecosystem. We heard [unclear name] say that this Interior Secretary recently, are these actually the reasons or people listening who are like, what this is big oil money or something else? What drove this sense that renewables are a problem?

Carlos Curbelo: There’s no conspiracy here. Big oil wants policy stability. Just like most people who invest in energy. A lot of these members on the hard right, and some administration officials view this through the prism of the culture wars. They view this through the prism of us versus them. They feel that Democrats, and to be fair, some have been pretty extreme when it comes to energy policy. If for example, you’re supportive of the Green New Deal, to me, that’s a pretty extreme policy position. The real Green New Deal, not the one that the president refers to. He kind of refers to everything as the Green New Deal, but the legislation that was filed under that name, that’s very aggressive policy. That’s probably not sustainable, and that would be highly disruptive and in my view, probably hurt a lot of people. So some of these people on the hard right who are in very conservative districts who only have to worry about a primary and being called traitors or soft or squish or whatever the pejorative term of the day is.

They adopt this in order to be culture warriors in order to gain credibility with their supporters in order to get more clicks and followers on social media. That is the main reason. We know that the arguments make no sense. There is no reason why people should be so passionate about what the source of energy is, right? If there’s a community that has an energy need and that need could be fulfilled in the most efficient manner by solar energy, great. If it’s natural gas, it’s a transition fuel. Everyone should accept that it’s okay. It’s an option. It’s what we have to do to get by.

And this is a lot of the work that I’ve tried to do with different organizations is to depoliticize this issue to help people understand, you know what? There’s abortion. There’s Second Amendment. Even issues like immigration. I can see how those are culture issues and fit neatly into this left versus right dynamic. Energy abundance does not belong there. It doesn’t belong there. It is too important. It’s like one day we’ll have to reform entitlements, and that should not be a partisan issue. People need – it’s so important and it’s so consequential that people need to find a way to do it together and to build consensus. So I’m a big believer in that. A lot of my work in this ecosystem is around that, and I think we’re going to get there. And I think that the fact that there were a lot of Republicans who did take a reasonable position on this, and look, let’s be fair.

The IRA was the most prominent achievement of the previous administration of a Democratic trifecta at a time in our country where our politics are so polarized. I think it was an obvious target for Republicans who needed to raise revenue for their priorities. The fact that so much of it survived is something that people should celebrate. I understand it’s hard to celebrate that you lost less, but I mean, we have to put everything in context and we have to zoom out and just be realistic about the times we’re living in. Be realistic about the fact that Democrats have been aggressive when they’ve had trifectas about pursuing their policies. I mean, reforming the entire healthcare system with only one party that was aggressive, right? And sure Democrats paid a price for it. Republicans have paid the price for being too aggressive when they’ve controlled the government, but these are the times we’re living in. So we have to just kind of be realistic and sober about that.

Jason Bordoff: There’s a lot of sense now among people that many of these Trump tariffs will persist beyond him, partly because people feel like it’s just hard for Congress to pull something back that by that point might be generating so much revenue. And as you know, that was part of a political economy argument for the Inflation Reduction Act. If you had a carbon tax, it’s easy to pull that away. But if you’re supporting investment in states, many red states, it’s harder for Congress to pull that back. And yet a lot of it, not all of it, to your point, was pulled back. There was an argument about political durability behind the IRA that seems to have proven, at least to a significant degree incorrect, notwithstanding your point that a lot of it, some of it remained. I’m wondering what you think that means for climate policy moving forward? Where do you think there can be common ground? What kind of policies are we just going to be doing this on a purely partisan reconciliation basis as far as the eye can see? Do you see any ways parties can come together? What could be more durable?

Carlos Curbelo: Well, there’s an opportunity now with permitting reform. In theory, everyone wants permitting reform because it benefits all sources of energy, right? Whether it’s oil, gas, wind, solar, geothermal, whatever it is. So permitting reform, which does require 60 votes in the Senate and will likely require Democratic votes in the house, because I think it’d be very difficult for the Speaker to pass permitting reform with only Republican votes. Ultimately, maybe a first draft. This is an opportunity, right? For those Republicans who truly believe in an all-of-the-above approach, and Democrats who also do, and many who favor renewables to find some kind of consensus through a bill that is going to be durable if it passes right? Because it is going to have both Republican and Democratic votes. So a lot of members claim that they want to do permitting reform. We’ve seen some important comments from senators like Shelley Moore Capito, who by the way said, yes, we should do permitting reform, and if we’re going to do permitting reform, we need to put all sources of energy on a level playing field.

No picking winners and losers. So here we go. We have an opportunity, again, to make energy policy in a bipartisan manner, which we’ve done. I mean, the American Energy Act was a bipartisan bill, the amendment to the Kyoto Protocol that was done on a bipartisan basis in the Senate. A lot of appropriations bills that passed and included investments in environmental programs and clean energy have been done in a bipartisan manner. So it’s not like this hasn’t happened recently. It has. We just need it to happen more at a more ambitious level. And permitting reform is a great opportunity and it’s going to be an opportunity for Congress to flex, especially given some of the administration officials who have expressed a willingness to diminish renewables or to treat renewables differently. We’ve seen some guidance and potential rulemaking from Interior. This is an opportunity for Congress to say, let’s reset all of this. Let’s be smart about it. We have massive energy needs in the country. We have a great opportunity here to truly unleash energy development and production. Let’s do it in a durable way where companies feel comfortable investing. The other issue with these changes to the IRA is you wonder if companies are in the future going to want to invest when Congress makes laws through the reconciliation process, right? So all of this is bad for economic growth, for investment, for jobs, for prosperity. Permitting reform is an opportunity to do better.

Jason Bordoff: You mentioned a moment ago that it’s not surprising the IRA was a target because Republicans needed revenue. Of course. One other way to get revenue is something you championed when you were in Congress, which is a price on carbon. Is that, should I think about that? I’m like beating up on Blockbuster video. I was going to say, should I think about that the same way I think about, I need a different thing, the Sears catalog? Is there any prospect of having a conversation about that? Do you still think it’s a good policy?

Carlos Curbelo: Look, I think it’s a policy that makes a lot of sense. And by the way, if we had that policy, we wouldn’t have to have all these tax incentives and all these rules and regulations. We could really simplify the whole system and get rid of a lot and raise a lot of revenue for the treasury, which we need. I don’t think a domestic carbon price is in play anytime soon. I do think that you could see a foreign pollution fee. Senator Cassidy has told us to call it a foreign pollution fee, not tax, not a carbon border tax, not a tax. But given this new openness to tariffs from the conservative party in our country, you could see a deal where, and there are Democrats who are certainly open to exporting our environmental standards. You could see that, and I do think that’s a way in which the two parties could come together. You still have a lot of skeptical Republicans. They think it’s a way to back into a domestic carbon tax, but if the law is well written and is tight about its intent, then you could see that kind of policy. And I think that would be a good step forward because our environmental standards happen to be very good, and if we export them, that’s a win.

Jason Bordoff: Just coming back to your point about renewables have become part of the ideological culture war. How do we get out of that? The idea that are there challenges with intermittent forms of energy? Yes, and you need to think about the right uses of batteries and backup thermal plants and grid regulation. They can be managed. I’m not pretending they don’t exist.

Carlos Curbelo: There’s challenges with nuclear. I mean, nuclear facilities introduce many challenges, but we manage them…

Jason Bordoff: When we need the power. And a lot of tech companies and others seem quite interested in putting more solar and wind to work. Maybe the president doesn’t like the look of offshore wind. I don’t know. Is there a way to get more, bring solar and wind back into an all-of-the-above approach that Washington thinks about in your view?

Carlos Curbelo: Yeah, there’s definitely a path there on the hill. And if Congress uses its Article One powers and makes laws and figures out a way to work in a bipartisan manner on at least a few issues, there definitely is. And I can tell you there are countless Republicans – some of them are on the record, a lot of them are on the record – who believe in this all-of-the-above approach, who don’t believe in discriminating between sources of energy. And they had an opportunity during the reconciliation process. Some of them spoke out and worked to influence that process. They’re going to have an even greater opportunity to build a bipartisan coalition in Congress in favor of more durable policy in a potential permitting reform exercise. Also in the appropriations process, appropriations is always a good opportunity for the two parties to collaborate and find common ground. So there are a number of opportunities approaching. And yeah, I think that the community of people who care about these issues need not cry over spilled milk and need to engage constructively and continue recruiting members across the spectrum who are willing to be constructive voices. And look, Republicans are in control now, and of course we’re focusing on them, but I think there are plenty of people on the left who would allow the good to be the enemy of the perfect, right? I’m not sure that they have a whole lot to contribute either.

Jason Bordoff: You mean made the conversation all about renewables and contributed to this? Is that what you’re saying, or…

Carlos Curbelo: That, or in a permitting reform exercise might say, well, if anything’s going to make life easier for oil and gas, then I’m out. We’re not going to vote for this. I can certainly see that happening. I think it will happen. And what the community needs to do is focus on those members who can get to yes, and who can say, look, we can all win a little, and this will leave us all better off.

Jason Bordoff: I don’t want to ask this question in a way that sounds excessively partisan, but I’m sure there are some people listening to this who are thinking, this all sounds very decade or so ago and bipartisan cooperation. And now you have an administration, maybe you want to call it a MAGA wing of the Republican Party. I don’t know how you would describe it, who people will at least perceive — tell me if it’s wrong — as kind of, and this is a party that you’re a part of that going back to the 1970s, was responsible for many of the landmark environmental laws, creation of the EPA, perceived as not being particularly concerned with protection of the environment and certainly not with climate change today. Do you think that’s an unfair perception?

Carlos Curbelo: I don’t think it’s an unfair perception. I think certainly a lot of prominent Republicans contribute to that perception. I think those people tend to get a lot more attention from the media and from cable television than members of Congress, from either party who are taking more reasonable and modest positions. So I understand why people have that perception. It doesn’t mean that progress can’t be made. It doesn’t mean that the system cannot yield some favorable outcomes. I think that if you were to find a random liberal who follows politics anywhere in our country and tell them that Republicans passed this reconciliation bill, and over half of the clean energy investment that was in the IRA was preserved, was kept, they’d be shocked, they’d be shocked. I think most people are probably under the impression that it was all done away with and that Republicans are just funding a bunch of new oil and gas plants all over the country, and that’s just not true.

Now, are there headlines that certainly – headlines based on facts that contribute to that perception? Yes. Does it mean that we give up on bipartisan policymaking on finding a way forward? Of course not. Of course not. I mean, I remind people the American Energy Act was signed into law by Donald Trump at the end of 2020, right? So I understand it’s a very difficult time in our country’s politics. There are overarching issues where people are legitimately and understandably concerned about our institutions, about the rule of law that certainly cloud everything. But if you care about this issue, if you care about energy, if you care about the environment, if you care about climate change, you have to focus on it and you have to focus on what’s achievable. And I still think there’s great potential for Congress to do a lot of important work, and for the administration to go along.

Jason Bordoff: And to find that pathway back to bipartisan cooperation on energy and climate. What would you want to see the left do differently?

Carlos Curbelo: Well, I think permitting reform will be a big test, and Democrats have a great leader in Scott Peters, someone who really understands energy issues, who’s committed to a bipartisan path forward. In the Senate, Chris Coons of Delaware is another very prominent leader who’s trusted on both sides of the aisle. These are the types of members of Congress who Democrats should follow and understand that if they really care about this issue, this is an opportunity to get some wins on the board for what they care about, whether it’s renewables, environmental protections for sensitive areas, whatever it is, this is an opportunity. Republicans have to do the same, right? Hey, if you want to make life easier for fossil fuels, you feel they’re under attack. You can probably get some important wins out of this legislation. You’re just going to have to give the other side and some Republicans some wins that are important to them on the renewable side and on environmental protection.

So this is going to be the first test, right? Post reconciliation, it’s obvious. It’s a very tense time on the hill. It’s not like this is going to be easy. Nothing is going to be easy on the hill for the foreseeable future, but it’ll be a good test case. And I hope the community, and I speak very broadly when I say the community, but just people who are stakeholders in this space who care about it. Either they have businesses or because they’re involved with nonprofits or people in academia like you. This is an opportunity and we should do everything we can to make sure that it succeeds.

Jason Bordoff: Talk about what you’re seeing on the ground there in Miami. You wrote an op-ed recently in the Miami Herald noting how significantly exposed Florida is to weather-related disasters, how much it costs the economy, calling for private firms to be able to consider those impacts in their financial planning. Do you see that sense of concern about climate continuing to grow? Companies responding, they’re on the ground?

Carlos Curbelo: Look, Jason, it doesn’t matter what I feel or what anyone feels. Markets don’t lie. Insurance costs in this state are totally out of control. The state legislature has tried to do some things to improve that situation. At the end of the day, they have no way to limit risk and to limit climate risk and flooding risk and extreme weather and hurricane risk. They can’t legislate any of that into law. They can work around the edges. They’ve done some tort reform stuff, which might help a little bit, but at the end of the day, Florida is facing an insurance crisis because of climate risk. There’s just no way around that. And by the way, we call it climate risk. If some people prefer that, we call it flood risk, let’s call it that. It’s the same thing, right? We’re playing a game, but that’s fine. Let’s make it more relatable.

Most people don’t like flooding. Climate risk, some people are confused about, so flooding. I mean, our family’s blessed to have a small investment property on Florida’s west coast. That property has dropped in value significantly, and it’s on the second floor. If it was on the first floor, we’d be even worse off. The little community where that property is, all the first floor units are still offline since October of last year. The kind of stress that’s putting on owners, they can’t use their units, they can’t rent their units while they still have to pay the carrying costs, which are increasing because insurance is going up. So this is the reality. I tell people, I don’t just – like the way I got into this issue, it wasn’t that I had some feeling or some apparition by some saint. It was just data and facts and like, hey, I care about my community.

This is a threat to my community. I need to engage. Not because it’s a moral issue. I mean it is, but that’s not why I engage. I’ll be honest with you. That’s not why I engage. I engage in a very pragmatic way. I don’t want my community to flood constantly. I want people to be able to live there. I want my daughters to be able to live there if they choose to when they make their own lives. So Florida’s west coast in particular, because for whatever reason, hurricanes have targeted the West Coast a lot more than the East Coast. When I was a kid, it was always the east coast. We were always the ones most exposed here in Miami, but now it’s the west coast. The hurricanes are getting into the Gulf.

Those communities are still suffering. And unless we make the investments that are necessary, and unless we address the root cause of the problem over time in a sustainable way, I tell people, especially on the left, the solutions for climate change have to be sustainable. This is a sustainability movement. Well, if we’re for sustainability, the solutions we propose have to be sustainable. Doubling the price of gasoline from one year to the next is not a sustainable solution because all the people who vote for that will lose and they should lose because that’s a very insensitive way to do this, right? And that hurts a lot of people. We don’t need to do it in that way. And we’ve seen that this whole movement doesn’t all have to be about pain and sacrifice. It can be about freedom and opportunity and prosperity, and that’s what we need to do. We need to tell people in Florida, look, we want you to pay less for your insurance, and this is how we get there. We have to take some collective action to get there, but at the end of the day, you’re going to be better off. This is not about taking anything away from you. It’s about ensuring that you can live where you want to live and vacation where you want to vacation and keep enjoying some of the most beautiful beaches in the world.

Jason Bordoff: And I’m curious what you see happening in Washington to help with those issues of severe weather, disaster response adaptation. Again, you can call it climate related or not, but the staffing and budget cuts, actions of DOGE, climate science investments being pulled back. How much of a loss of capacity do you think there’s been in the federal government to help a state like Florida to deal with what you’re describing?

Carlos Curbelo: Yeah. Look, I’m not someone who’s going to defend every single federal job and every single federal program. I think there’s certainly room to make the federal government work more efficiently. I don’t think that every single climate or environmental program is sacred. But clearly a lot of these cuts have been indiscriminate and they just haven’t been thoughtful. They’ve just been across-the-board cuts, and it’s hurt a lot of important programs and functions, and we will see where this administration ultimately decides to go on disaster relief. I don’t think that the idea of taking funds and granting them to states is automatically something that should be dismissed. Maybe a state like Florida can use that kind of funding to build up coastal infrastructure, to elevate roads, to build new sea walls. That would be a good thing. Right? Now, does that mean that the federal government is completely absent and does not support communities in their recovery efforts?

I don’t think we have to go to that extreme either. I think there’s always going to be some federal – and by the way, this is a practical idea, but you think if Florida or Texas or New York or wherever it is, gets hit by a massive storm that members of Congress from that area aren’t going to appropriate supplemental dollars to help their communities. They are. So, I mean, the administration can take whatever view it wants on disaster relief. But if Congress passes a bill that funds disaster relief, and by the way, disaster relief, even though it’s become less so, the case is still always a bipartisan exercise, it’s still going to happen. So look, don’t, again, I’m not going to come out and condemn and say, well, this is all horrible. I mean, I think they can do some good things, but indiscriminately cutting federal programs, Department of Commerce, National Hurricane Center, I mean, no, I am not for that. I mean this, I live in Miami. I can’t be for that.

Jason Bordoff: You’ve been very generous with your time, Carlos Curbelo. Always good to talk to you and hear your perspectives and learn from you. Hope to see you again in person soon, my friend. And I’m hopeful your call for using evidence and data to reach sensible bipartisan policy is something that seems hard, but we should keep aspiring to it. Obviously, it motivates a lot of why we do what we do every day.

Carlos Curbelo: And your work at Columbia is a big part of that because since you started your work there, it’s always been about delivering facts and data in a sober, nonpartisan way, and that’s what we need a whole lot more of in this country.

Jason Bordoff: I appreciate it. Thanks for being part of it, and thanks for joining us today, Carlos Curbelo.

Carlos Curbelo: See you soon. Thanks.

Jason Bordoff: Thank you again, Carlos Curbelo. And thanks to all of you for listening to this week’s episode of Columbia Energy Exchange. The show is brought to you by the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. The show is hosted by me, Jason Bordoff and by Bill Loveless. The show is produced by Mary Catherine O’Connor. Additional support from Caroline Pitman and Kyu Lee. Greg Vilfranc engineered the show. For more information about this podcast or about the Center on Global Energy Policy, you can visit us online at energypolicy.columbia.edu or follow us on social media at Columbia U Energy. And please, if you feel inclined, go to Apple Podcasts and give us a rating. It really helps us out. Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you next week.

The rollback of the Inflation Reduction Act through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act has reshaped America’s climate and energy landscape by cutting tax incentives for wind and solar power and electric vehicles while maintaining some federal support for sources like nuclear reactors and geothermal plants. 

While there is some uncertainty about how those policy changes will play out, there are even broader questions about what this all means for the Republican Party’s energy policy agenda and approach to climate change. 

So where is the party headed and what could bipartisan cooperation on energy policy look like in today’s Washington? Can Republicans and Democrats still find common ground on issues like climate adaptation, energy security, and permitting reform? And what is shaping the Republican Party’s approach to energy policy? 

This week, Jason talks to Carlos Curbelo about the current state of Republican thinking on energy and climate policy.

Carlos is a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He served Florida’s 26th congressional district from 2015 to 2019. During his time in Congress, Carlos was a leading Republican voice on climate policy, co-founding and co-chairing the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus. After leaving Congress, Carlos served as a distinguished visiting fellow at the Center for Global Energy Policy. He also co-founded Vocero, a communications and strategic consulting firm based in South Florida.

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