Governors' Biofuels Coalition

In an analysis of social media posts and emails from 271 Democrats elected to Congress this cycle, The Washington Post found that just 25 included environmental issues among their priorities. Only six mentioned the word “climate.” Meanwhile, 109 victorious Democrats issued statements including the word “war,” and 166 discussed affordability.

Climate activists, researchers and officials say that gap reflects the extent to which cost-of-living concerns linked to tariffs and conflict in the Middle East superseded most other issues for voters, even after the contiguous United States sweltered through its hottest summer on record boosted by climate change.

Still, rising global temperatures can influence voters’ other priorities, such as the price of fuel, food and home insurance, experts noted — potentially creating opportunities to promote renewable energy and curb planet-warming pollution.

“It’s been relegated to a kind of second-order problem because of the economic pain people are going through,” said Sheila Foster, a professor at the Columbia Climate School who focuses on policy, law and climate justice. “But that can change very quickly … as climate issues manifest in a real way in people’s lives.”

Here’s what to know about what the election’s “blue tsunami” means for climate:

But climate sometimes rode on its coattails.

Most Democrats ran on a platform that they would make American’s lives more affordable.

William Lawrence, a climate activist who unseated a Republican in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, said that is because candidates “have to meet people where they’re at.”

“The economic concerns are , along with the war and the data centers bullying their way into people’s small towns” said Lawrence, who was a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led political organization pushing for more aggressive climate policies. “But all of these issues have a bearing on our climate system.”

The pitch for reining in skyrocketing electricity bills rests on boosting clean energy, such as solar projects that are often the fastest and cheapest power to build.

“Climate benefits from clean energy, and clean energy is the best way to meet people’s affordability needs,” said Michelle Moore, chief executive of Groundswell, a nonprofit that works in several states to promote clean energy and lower electricity bills.

Several candidates found ways to connect climate change to the economic woes that dominated this election cycle, said Sara Chieffo, senior vice president of government affairs for the League of Conservation Voters.

For example, Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Florida), who held onto her seat despite redistricting efforts, emphasized the financial toll of hurricanes fueled by rising global temperatures: heavy rebuilding costs, lower home values, skyrocketing insurance premiums.

“When we’re talking about climate change, it’s not just about the weather. It is about your wallet,” she said at a February event covered by the Tampa Bay Times. “When [officials] gut pollution protections … you’re making [constituents’] lives more expensive.”

Chieffo also pointed to Arizona’s 6th Congressional District, which elected Democrat JoAnna Mendoza after one of the state’s deadliest heat seasons on record. The Navy and Marine Corps veteran told E&E News her “top concern” was ensuring her constituents could afford to cool their homes. She frequently criticized incumbent Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R) for voting to slash renewable energy tax credits that Mendoza said could help bring down electricity costs.

“We have a real opportunity here to put climate solutions into frames that touch people’s lives,” Chieffo said. “I’m really excited about the chance to build a bigger and broader coalition through that strategy.”

Several of the newly elected Democratic senators are representing states that are traditionally oil and gas producers.

James Talarico, who will soon be the first Democrat to represent Texas in the Senate in over 30 years, appears to have moderated his stances on climate to win in the nation’s largest oil- and gas-producing state.

While in the state legislature, Talarico introduced a law that would require Texas to halve its emissions by 2030, and said “fossil fuels are destroying the planet” during a conversation about a deadly winter storm that took a heavy toll on the state’s natural gas infrastructure.

But in his Senate campaign, Talarico pledged an “all of the above” energy strategy that includes protecting oil and gas jobs while growing, wind, solar and geothermal power generation.

“Given how powerful and important the oil industry is in Texas,” newly elected Democrats will have to tread carefully, said Luke Metzger, executive director of the nonprofit Environment Texas.

Democrat Mary Peltola, who is leading in the still uncalled Alaska Senate race, has similarly pledged to promote oil and gas development alongside clean energy.

Regardless, those newly elected officials will be joining Democratic Senate leaders who are still strong climate advocates and will be setting the agenda in the Senate, said Leah Stokes, an environmental politics professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. That includes Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico), who will lead the Environment and Natural Resources Committee; Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) who is expected to run the Environment and Public Works Committee; and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), Stokes said.

The House is expected to have more vocal climate advocates like Lawrence and Colorado’s Melat Kiros, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who campaigned on climate and a “Green New Deal.”

Lawrence, asked if Democrats can find a balance on fossil fuels like natural gas, said that has always been an issue in negotiating bills in Congress and “I’m sure this time will be no different.”

The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act was a high water mark for federal climate policy, dedicating a historic $369 billion to fighting carbon emissions and promoting green technology. But many of those investments were cut off when President Donald Trump took office. Since January 2025, his administration has frozen grants, repealed tax credits and canceled billions of dollars worth of renewable energy projects.

Some of those moves, such as Trump’s effort to claw back $20 billion from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, are already tied up in the courts. But a Democratic Congress could try to reinstate Inflation Reduction Act tax credits and unlock frozen funding by attaching measures to the federal budget or other must-pass legislation.

Foster, the Columbia professor, suggested Democrats should focus their efforts on programs that can lower costs for individuals — for example, restoring tax credits for energy efficiency and rooftop solar panels that could reduce homeowners’ reliance on increasingly pricey oil and gas.

The new majority could also use its subpoena power to scrutinize the administration’s environmental rollbacks, including investigating the cancellation of offshore wind projects and staff cuts at environmental agencies.

“They won’t be able to ignore us when we’re in the majority,” said David Schutt, executive director of the U.S. House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition, made up of Democratic lawmakers who favor climate action.

Democrats also hope to restore funding and staff at key agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, he said.

Senate Democrats would also have the power to block Trump’s nominees for any climate-related Cabinet positions that come up in the next two years.

In Texas — the nation’s biggest oil- and gas-producing state but also its top renewable energy generator — Democrats swept the top statewide seats and took control of the House in the state legislature, thrilling climate activists in the longtime Republican stronghold.

“It’s a big shift from when … in the state government, ‘climate change’ was a dirty word,” Metzger said.

Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa spearheaded the development of a state climate planwhile serving in the legislature, he noted. Though her ability to pass new legislation will be constrained by the Republican-controlled state Senate, she will be able to appoint new commissioners to key agencies that oversee air quality standards, pollution enforcement and land conservation. She can also name a new chancellor for the University of Texas system, influencing how the school manages 2.1 million acres of oil- and gas-producing land that it owns in the Permian Basin.

And for the first time in more than 30 years, a Democrat was elected to the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry. Jon Rosenthal ran on a platform of stricter oversight and enhanced environmental protections, and although he remains outnumbered by the commission’s two Republican members, Metzger is hopeful Rosenthal can call attention to practices like routine venting and flaring, which release potent greenhouse gases directly into the air.

In Georgia, Democrats won control of the Public Service Commission, which has the power to set the rates that roughly two-thirds of the state’s residents pay for electricity, said Groundswell chief executive Moore. They can use that power to set policies that incentivize consumers to install heat pumps, batteries or otherwise increase their energy efficiency, she said.

With Georgia’s Democratic Gov.-elect Keisha Lance Bottoms and a new majority in the legislature’s lower house, a law legalizing solar panels that households can plug in themselves also has a greater chance of passing, Moore said.

State and local policies often are the most influential over whether data centers with major climate and environment implications are built or not, said Manish Bapna, president and chief executive of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group. For example, the EPA has delegated many states the authority over whether to grant Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act permits, he said.

Bottoms has said she will pause construction of data centers upon taking office, as the state determines how to tackle its possible impacts on energy prices.

Democrats may hold healthy majorities, but they must still work with Trump, whose veto power will likely stand in the way of any sweeping climate policy akin to the Inflation Reduction Act. Democrats can still use this time to begin drafting and debate legislation so that it is ready to go if the party takes over the White House after the 2028 election.

“More ambitious climate policy will more likely happen in the next administration and the next two years can help lay the foundation for what that should look like,” Bapna said.

In the meantime, Foster said, there’s every reason to expect that climate disasters will continue to worsen, pushing the issue back on people’s radars. Slow-onset, persistent crises, such as high tides that repeatedly damage infrastructure or prolonged water shortages that imperil farms, are especially potent, because they are indicators that “climate is affecting people’s every day,” she said.

“It’s so much a part of our lives now, I think we have to get back to it as a policy concern,” Foster continued. “And until then I think you have very savvy politicians that will … be doing the work under umbrella of affordability, but very much doing climate policy.”

The Washington Post analyzed 2,381 social media posts and podcasts produced from the evening of Tuesday, Nov. 3, through Monday, Nov. 9, from all congressional Democrats who won their elections.

The Post identified agenda statements as explicit promises, plans and lists of problems. Twenty-five members of Congress made no public agenda statements. We classified those promises into 14 topic areas. An AI agenda-statement classifier had an accuracy rate of 94 percent; the topic classifier had an 85 percent accuracy rate; both used GPT-6 Luna.