welcome to Pennsylvania and focus I'm Elana kernodle the presidential debate Tuesday night in Philadelphia focused on immigration abortion and crowds zat campaign rallies what went under discussed however was a topic close to the heart of Pennsylvania's economy energy joining me with more on this story is the center Square's Pennsylvania reporter Anthony hennon Anthony how did energy figure into the debate this week uh yeah not very much really when you look it over you know this debate went about an hour and a half um we only had one brief exchange um focus on energy and given that this was hosted in Philadelphia um it's no surprise that it's centered on fracking and who does and doesn't support it kamla Harris uh when she was running for president back in 2019 said that there was no question I would ban fracking but by 2020 she had disavowed that stance as uh Joe B's running mate and sees it as a crucial thing um when this popped up in the debate Harris aru I made that clear in 2020 I will not ban fracking my position is that we have got to invest in diverse sources of energy so we reduce our Reliance on foreign oil Trump of course argued that this was basically smok and Mir and that on day one that she would go in and ban fracking and basically bring the oil and gas industry to a halt but we didn't really get a lot of deep engagement here Beyond fracking or oil or gas um especially Pennsylvania specifically you know fracking is not it gets some oil production but Pennsylvania is not a major oil producer in the US Pennsylvania is a huge producer of natural gas um the second largest in the country only behind Texas and it's also uh you know we've seen some discussion broadly in the media that almost almost as if fracking is some third rail in Pennsylvania politics um but it's really not when you're diving into public perception of fracking um um it's actually fairly split as far as support and opposition um a 2022 poll found that 48% of Pennsylvanian support fracking and 44% oppose it um that's not to say that people don't uh think it's a major economic boost for the state um 86% saw natural gas industry as important to the state's economy um but there are concerns about public health um safety environmental harm so it's not NE it's not so black black and white here in Pennsylvania and I think Pennsylvania just as a crucial part of the pjm grid which covers 13 states the District of Columbia and 65 million people you know how Pennsylvania approaches energy and energy production the future is really going to have some national Ripple effects and Harris also pointed to the inflation reduction act um as sort of proof of her stance what's kind of the story there yeah so she was already basically as the tiebreaking vote to pass the inflation reduction act um that this has been a big boost um for fracking which o open some new leases and federal lands um which you know is is fair it's not quite the big picture here because one of the issues on the federal level with tracking and oil production is a lot of these leases are either getting hung up or not approved it's kind of these this year's long delay and a source of frustration um but more I I think more broadly when we're talking about the IRA and how it's affected energy much of that funding has been going toward not so much you know use of fracking much more so toward renewable energy um solar especially has been a big thing um battery storage to basically save more solar energy um wind has been a big thing basically more than $400 billion do um has been earmarked for renewable energy through the IRA um we see we see these projects in Pennsylvania we see these projects and a bunch of other states I think broadly speaking when we're talking about the Democratic approach in recent years to energy um there's a lot of subsidies going in for renewable projects um there's a little more openness toward nuclear power not not completely there there's been some major setbacks with that but compared to 20 years ago Democrats seem more friendly to nuclear power but there's also a little less opposition to fossil fuels U maybe not so in the rhetoric but I think there is a pragmatic angle here as we've seen with the Biden administration of you know they they may not favor oil and in natural gas some state legislator are looking to um either potentially put in some band or limit it in some ways um but at least at the federal level we're seeing more engagement uh fracking is here to stay you know we can't just get rid of natural gas coal these fossil fuels you know they're not necessarily excited about it but they're not as maybe in anistic as we've seen a lot of uh rhetoric in the past decade and have either the presidential candidates addressed energy much outside of the bounds of this debate uh I mean yes and no I mean we're getting a little bit of it here and there um in their platforms Harris is kind of pushing more these broad uh talking points about lowering household energy costs and creating hundreds of thousands of high quality clean energy jobs and driving up energy production to record levels Trump is staring that his administration would unleash energy dominance if he gets reelected um basically getting rid of barriers for oil natural gas coal B basically taking advantage of what we've been doing and trying to either get rid of some barriers or restrictions or speed up some priting processes but it's it's hard to say um you know how much of this is political rhetoric versus how much of this will be an actual priority and one of the big problems we see with energy with electricity with um grid stability you know we're seeing we've seen in recent years blackouts and brown outs in California we've seen the failure of the energy Grid in Texas um a few Winters ago and this all kind of belies as renewable energy grows the grid becomes less stable because these are intermittent sources of energy we see a lot of interest growing in nuclear energy or in battery storage to make sure that when we do have wind and solar power we can store that and then use it when those sources die down but all of this is happening in the context of increasing energy demand and we're seeing this in Texas we're seeing this in the PGM energy grid we're seeing a lot of delays with getting new energy projects no matter what sort of energy they're using um getting connected into this grid and I think the big question that's not necessarily being addressed here over the next five or 10 years is where's this energy coming from how are we going to speed up these projects and are we going to avoid theti Nation seeing problems that we've seen in California and Texas there's not really one United energy approach because each energy grid aside from Texas has its own California has its own but most energy grids are like pjm they're multi-state you have competing interest you have competing um State energy policies and there's not one Authority coordinating this or there's not one person responsible for making sure that um interconnections are happening that um transmission lines are being reinvested in and up kept um that seems to be the next problem we're facing on the state level on the federal level how do you not only increase energy production to meet demand but how do you ensure the grid is working that it's reliable and that it's stable well Anthony thank you for your insights on this story listeners can keep up with this story and more at the centers square.com