Senate Democrats say if they retake the majority, they will revitalize the clean energy sector with policies that help spur jobs and lower consumer costs.
In past elections, Democrats promoted clean energy sources as key to saving the environment from the harmful effects of fossil fuel-driven pollution.
This year, they say their message should center around the jobs that clean energy projects create as America competes with countries like China to reduce dependence on oil.
“We can decide to keep building the projects and industries that will power our future, or we can surrender those jobs and that economic leadership to other nations,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich, the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Mr. Heinrich of New Mexico led a roundtable discussion on Tuesday with fellow Senate Democrats and labor leaders to discuss policies that support clean energy and manufacturing jobs and how his party can communicate those benefits to voters.
“Clean energy is something that we need because it’s the future,” said Sen. Peter Welch, Vermont Democrat. “We’re seeing China is really leaping ahead of us in terms of electrification of the economy. And you’ve got the workers that are able to do the jobs.”
Mr. Heinrich said the Trump administration’s decision to turn its back on clean energy and Republicans’ repeal of tax credits designed to incentivize investment in the sector have removed over 100,000 anticipated jobs.
The GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act repealed wind and solar tax credits and rolled back other clean energy policies from the Biden administration.
President Trump has slammed wind projects on land and sea as a massive waste of money and danger to birds and whales.
“We will not approve wind or farmer destroying Solar,” Trump said on social media. “The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!!”
A recent report from BlueGreen Alliance, a group that partners with labor and environmental organizations, found that the law has already delayed or canceled 223 projects representing at least $82 billion in capital investment and 111,000 jobs.
“We also found that more than 3,000 manufacturing, clean energy and industrial sites will face tax restrictions and tax increases … putting at risk almost $700 billion in capital investment and 1.2 million jobs,” BlueGreen Alliance Executive Director Jason Walsh said.
Brent Booker, general president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, said the Trump administration’s efforts to halt offshore wind projects have displaced many of his union’s construction workers.
“We’ve lost more jobs on offshore wind, onshore wind and solar — way more than we ever did on Keystone,” he said, referring to a project to extend a key oil pipeline that the Biden administration killed.
Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, said the Trump administration’s actions are head-scratching.
“It’s counterintuitive to what this administration says they want right, which is to grow jobs and especially a manufacturing base,” she said. “We can attest very specifically to the fact that prices are going up and people are in an affordability crisis because of the cancellation of a lot of these investments and the uncertainty that it has produced.”
Democrats can seize on that uncertainty by laying out a “bold vision” on how they will reignite manufacturing and create jobs “and energize working people all over this country to drive turnout in these critical swing states,” Ms. Shuler said.
Mr. Booker warned Democrats against adopting policy positions that will also have a harmful impact on job creation, such as a moratorium on AI data center construction that some left-wing members have floated.
“This new wave of infrastructure has become a game changer in many parts of the country,” he said. “Putting a so-called moratorium on data center construction is no better than presidential attacks on our renewable jobs.”
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