Nevada GOP Governor Highlights Clean Energy in New Climate Plan

Nevada’s governor on Thursday released his plan to address the impacts of climate change in the state, focusing on streamlining clean energy development and boosting Nevada’s mining industry.

The 33-page “Climate Innovation Plan” released by Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo comes after his administration in 2023 pulled his Democratic predecessor’s proposal for cutting the state’s greenhouse gas emissions. Environmentalists repeatedly called on Lombardo to release his own plan.

The plan put forward Thursday “seeks to mitigate the changing patterns of the environment, while also considering economic realities and national security,” Lombardo’s office said in a statement. “By harnessing clean energy, improving energy efficiency, and fostering economic growth, we’re establishing Nevada as a leader in climate solutions.”

Lombardo’s proposal emphasizes the need to remove hurdles to developing clean energy projects, including via reforms to permitting laws at the state and federal levels. More than 80% of Nevada’s land is controlled by the federal government.

But it puts a particular spotlight on the state’s vast deposits of minerals essential to the energy transition. Lithium, a key ingredient in electric vehicle batteries, is thought to exist in huge quantities in the state, and the Energy Department conditionally approved a loan for a massive mine there earlier this year. The United States produced just 1% of the world’s lithium in 2021, according to the World Economic Forum.

Some Democrats and environmentalists criticized the climate plan, calling it too vague and saying it does not put forward concrete steps for new actions, instead summarizing what the state has already done.

“If one of my students submitted an essay like this ‘climate plan,’ I would give it back to be rewritten,” state Assemblywoman Selena La Rue Hatch, a Democrat, said in a post on X. “Even my students know that taking credit for the work of others and offering vague statements with zero evidence to support them is not good enough.”

The Sierra Club, in a statement, said the plan was “vague, insufficient, and reads like a love letter to extractive, corporate interests.”

Lombardo last year withdrew Nevada from the US Climate Alliance, a bipartisan, multistate agreement aimed at combating climate change.