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Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump provide a clear contrast over whether the energy debate in the United States over the next four years will be about green energy or fossil fuels.

But the extent to which they can deliver on their various promises will depend on the extent of their party’s control over Washington.

For Trump to consider reducing the government’s role in green energy, the former president would likely need more than a solo victory to make good on his promise. He would also need a cooperative Congress.

On the other hand, a Harris or Trump victory could change the path forward for fossil fuels, as the president has more unilateral authorities in this area, although Harris has promised to take a moderate approach to with regard to traditional energy sources.

Regardless, Brian Gardner, chief policy strategist at Stifel in Washington, issued a warning to investors and industry watchers in a recent note, emphasizing that the best time to own green energy stocks was during Trump’s previous term and that the best time to own fossil fuel stocks was over. recently under Biden.

“This is a cautionary tale: pro-industry policies are not always correlated with stock performance,” he wrote.

For Harris, promises of an ‘all of the above’ energy approach

Harris used her one and only debate against Trump to provide a tone on energy issues that hasn’t been heard from Democrats lately.

“My position is that we need to invest in diverse energy sources to reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” Harris said, at one point referring to green energy while also emphasizing that it was instrumental in the approval of new fracking leases during the decade. Biden administration.

This was immediately described by many as akin to an “all of the above” energy approach that was popular in the past among Democrats from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama, but less so in recent years.

by Harris developments on the issue is also crucial in the swing state of Pennsylvania, which relies heavily on fracking and has viewed Harris’ 2019 pledges to ban the practice with suspicion.

As for what she would do while in office, experts like Stifel’s Gardner expect that if elected, “even though Harris has renounced her positions to crack down on oil and gas, we believe her administration will always aim to promote clean energy over traditional energy.”

Harris has signaled his focus on both, also making sure during the September debate to note that “we have invested a trillion dollars in a clean energy economy while increasing domestic gas production at historic levels.

Tobin Marcus Wolfe Research added in its own election night preview that while Harris is unlikely to dramatically change the government’s oil and gas leasing levels, she could do smaller issues like emissions standards vehicles a more important question.

For Trump, a promise to “drill, baby, drill”

Trump, by contrast, focused his messaging in the final weeks of his campaign on his plan to open the doors to oil drilling and even promised that it would. generate a stream of revenue to fund other priorities.

Oil is “liquid gold”, the former president likes to repeat.

What he often forgets is that the United States, under the Biden-Harris administration, is currently drilling more oil than under Trump. In fact, the United States currently produces more than any other country in history.

Nonetheless, Trump promises a massive increase in supply and lower prices. “We’re going to cut it in half, and that includes your heating, your air conditioning, your electricity and gas for cars,” he said. an audience in Wisconsin. “And we will do it easily. You can make me.”

Although experts doubt that Trump can achieve such a thing, there is no doubt that he will seek to rapidly expand oil and gas drilling; this is an area in which a president has significant power to act unilaterally.

Experts also expect Trump to at least try to end the green energy tax credits implemented in recent years by Biden under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022. It’s something Trump promises his campaign audiences almost every day,

Learn more: Trump vs. Harris: 4 ways the next president could impact your bank accounts

In a recent Wall Street Journal interviewBillionaire financier John Paulson — a possible Trump Treasury secretary — added that his particular goal, if installed, would be to gut the IRA and eliminate green energy subsidies.

Although such a move could save the U.S. government an estimated $921 billion over the coming decade, Trump and Paulson would almost surely need congressional oversight to follow through on it.

In his guide, Marcus de Wolfe predicts that clean energy subsidies under the IRA would be safe in three of its four scenarios. The only scenario that could result in a partial pushback is a Republican victory, with Trump in the White House and Republicans controlling both chambers of the Capitol.

In contrast, any form of Trump-led government would likely result in more oil lease sales and an end to the current pause on liquefied natural gas, Marcus added.

Ben Werschkul is Yahoo Finance’s Washington correspondent.

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