Biden Is Giving Red Districts an Inconvenient Gift: Green Jobs
The White House’s policies have fueled plans for more than $200 billion in cleantech manufacturing investments — mostly in districts with Republican lawmakers opposed to the agenda.
The single largest investment in the burgeoning US green energy supply chain involves a construction site the size of 121 football fields near Greensboro, North Carolina, and a check for $13.9 billion. By 2030, the Toyota Corp. facility could be employing more than 5,000 people cranking out enough batteries to power half-a-million new electric vehicles each year.
What’s not to like about that? This seemingly rhetorical question actually demands an answer given America’s partisan divide over climate change.
The Toyota project, which began with a $1.3 billion initial investment announced in 2021, massively expanded after passage the following year of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), President Joe Biden’s signature green legislation offering hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies for clean technology. The IRA was unanimously opposed by Republicans in Congress. Its cousin, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, containing a smaller set of cleantech subsidies, was nominally bipartisan but only drew 13 “yeas” from House Republicans when it passed in 2021.
One Republican critic of the IRA said, using fairly typical language, that it would “raise taxes” and “throw money at woke climate and social programs that won’t work.” That critic, Rep. Richard Hudson, represents North Carolina’s 9th district, which happens to be where Toyota is building that mammoth battery plant.
Hudson’s district epitomizes a peculiarity of the US energy transition — and a growing problem for Republicans. There is a certain luxury enjoyed by politicians who can be rhetorically against something while still quietly welcoming any dollars and jobs that it brings to their constituents. Looking ahead to November, if Republicans are empowered to a point where they actually could vote those dollars away, it would present a much thornier dilemma — and a moment of truth.
What’s more, factors such as abundant land and cheaper labor have drawn billions of dollars in cleantech investment not only to red districts but also to the swing states that will likely determine who prevails in the race for the White House.
Bloomberg Opinion teamed up with Jeff Davies, founder of EnerWrap, which specializes in data-driven insights on the US energy system, to follow the money and construct a granular map of where US cleantech factories announced on Biden’s watch are planned or being built. This encompasses hundreds of projects in more than 450 cities spread across 44 states plus Puerto Rico, backed by more than $200 billion of planned investment. They’re expected to generate 195,000 jobs, plus economic multiplier effects for local businesses, tax bases and infrastructure.
Whichever way you slice the numbers — spending, jobs, projects announced under Biden before or after the passage of the IRA — red districts garner an overwhelming proportion of the benefits.
Of the 51 projects in the country that top the $1 billion mark, 43 are in red districts. And of the top 25 districts in the country for announced cleantech manufacturing investment, 21 have a Republican representative in the House. Those 21 districts alone account for an aggregate $119 billion of investment — more than half the national total — and more than 80,000 jobs. This is nothing less than a landslide.
These numbers are transformational for some districts. Consider Georgia’s 11th, home to Cartersville, an exurb of Atlanta that has attracted almost $7.5 billion of planned investment in several plants making solar panels and batteries. The associated jobs equate to about 12% of the current labor force in that county, Bartow.
Yet the district’s congressman, Rep. Barry Loudermilk, joined several other GOP House members from Georgia in an op-ed in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution calling the IRA a “bad deal.” While the op-ed warned of the impact that the IRA’s domestic-content provisions might have on existing projects in Georgia owned by Hyundai Motor Co., that company has since expanded its plans in the state. Georgia is, by the way, the number one state in the country for cleantech investment dollars and jobs.
Across the country, projects to produce battery minerals, components and packs account for $132 billion of planned spending, more than for all other cleantech sectors combined — which makes sense since batteries underpin EVs and, increasingly, solar and wind projects. Red districts dominate investment in the battery sector, too, taking more than four out of every five of those dollars. Even with offshore wind, where many of the turbines will be deployed off coastal, and therefore often bluer, states, Republican districts account for more pledged dollars in the supply chain than Democratic districts.
Battery Manufacturing Investments in Red Districts Boomed Under Biden
- Red districts
- Blue districts
- Unallocated
Source: US Department of Energy
Note: Includes planned investments announced during President Biden’s term.
Just before the IRA passed two years ago, we tracked where renewable energy projects were being deployed in the US. We found, similarly, that red districts dominated the tally. One reason is simple geography: Rural or semi-rural districts that skew Republican offer more open, and cheaper, land to build solar and wind projects (and sometimes sunnier and windier conditions, especially in the South and Midwest).
Cheaper land is also good for new factories, as are state incentives to revitalize rural locales. Access to cheaper labor outside of major cities is another draw, especially in right-to-work states, many of which also skew Republican.
Cleantech Jobs Provide a Big Boost for Local Economies
Ellabell, GA
Hyundai batteries, EVs
8,100 jobs
Equivalent to 39% of county labor force
Rutledge, GA
Rivian EVs (project paused)
7,500 jobs
77% equivalent
Stanton, TN
Ford EVs
6,000 jobs
74% equivalent
Liberty, NC
Toyota batteries
5,100 jobs
8% equivalent
Glendale, KY
Ford, SK On batteries
5,000 jobs
10% equivalent
Source: US Department of Energy
Photos via Getty Images: Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg (Hyundai); Bing Guan/Bloomberg (Rivian); Houston Cofield/Bloomberg (Ford); Logan Cyrus/AFP (Toyota); Jon Cherry/Bloomberg (Ford/SK)
Randolph County, home to that Toyota project, ranks as North Carolina’s 44th most distressed county, out of 100, in the state’s development tier system. The county only recently moved up one tier from the weakest. The median salary for the first 1,750 jobs at the plant, created from the initial investment, will be about 80% higher than the current county median level. County officials’ latest management plan says the “megasite” will have growth impacts “never before envisioned.”
Similarly, a new $1.9 billion battery plant aimed at commercial electric vehicles, announced in January, is touted as “truly life changing to the constituents” of Marshall County, Mississippi, by state senator Neil Whaley (a Republican, notably). Gov. Tate Reeves, another Republican, hailed it as the second-largest capital investment in the state’s history. The factory, set to begin production in 2027, is expected to generate 2,000 jobs — equivalent to 15% of the county’s entire labor force — paying an average of $66,000 per year, 47% higher than the average there in 2022. Republican Rep. Trent Kelly, whose 1st district in Mississippi hosts the project, has denounced the IRA as being inflationary; his website’s section on energy chiefly extols the benefits of fracking.
Republican support for oil and gas development hardly counts as breaking news, but this brings us to an important difference between legacy and new energy industries as they pertain to the US.
Extraction is tied to geology and thereby tends to be concentrated. For example, EnerWrap has identified that 76% of the oil produced on federal lands comes from just two counties in the entire country, both in New Mexico. At a wider level, just 10 states derived 5% or more of their gross domestic product from fossil energy in 2022, producing 93%, 69% and 72% of US onshore oil, gas and coal, respectively, according to ClearView Energy Partners, a Washington-based analysis firm. And while US oil and gas production has hit new records, the industry employs 73,000 fewer people than it did five years ago. The financial scars left by the shale boom of the previous decade mean “drill, baby, drill” might be a useful political slogan but is no way to run a profitable business.
Cleantech, in terms of siting not just energy projects but also the factories assembling the equipment, is inherently diffuse. States such as Georgia, Michigan and North Carolina — the top three for investment — may have essentially zero fossil-fuel resources but they do have educated workforces, top universities, logistical hubs and land for assembly lines. They also have towns and counties eager for economic development.
Three Swing States Benefit Most
- Swing state investments
Source: US Department of Energy
Georgia, Michigan and North Carolina also happen to be swing states. Indeed, five of the seven swing states — those three plus Nevada and Arizona — feature in the top 15 for cleantech investment. One notable laggard is Pennsylvania, which is the biggest in terms of electoral college votes but comes in at 28th for cleantech investment with less than $1 billion planned. It’s also the only swing state with a significant fossil fuels industry.
Of course, not all projects may end up getting built exactly as planned, as Rivian Automotive Inc.’s recent pause on construction of a plant in Georgia demonstrated. Even so, as billions of dollars flow into red districts, the probability of a clash between ideological purity and economic pragmatism is growing. It is entirely possible, of course, that November 2024 reshapes the political landscape, including who holds power in Washington. A second term for former President Donald Trump may see a concerted effort to roll back Biden’s green agenda. But to do so, he would need a lot of House Republicans to vote away two things every district needs more of: Jobs and money, green or otherwise.