It’s a scene demanded by broadcast news and future campaign ads. But it’s also a bit of a charade. Especially with the Clean Power Plan now on hiatus, the federal government does not command the nation’s energy policy. The decisions on the ground, the ones about land and cement and steel, are made by power company executives and state utility board members.

They are made, in other words, by people like Ted Thomas.

I talked to Thomas last month in anticipation of Trump reviewing and weakening the Clean Power Plan. “I have a unique position that I think is in the center, that is almost solitary,” he told me. “In that, A, I offered a declaration in support of the litigation against the Clean Power Plan; B, I publicly criticized Senator McConnell’s ‘just say no’ strategy; C, I think that carbon emissions are correlated with global temperature increase, and humans are causing enough of it that it’s a public policy problem; but D, I also think that identifying a problem isn’t enough. You have to identify a solution and have a straightforward problem about what it costs.”

Thomas is also a career Republican. “I’m a former Republican legislator, who was appointed by a Republican governor, and I was actually a former Republican political consultant,” he told me. “So I’m fairly established as a Republican.” (He was also budget director when Mike Huckabee was the state’s governor.)

He agrees with Bill Gates that the best solution to climate change is ultimately technological. “We need technology—which thrives in market capitalism, so we need that—but we need the right policies that accommodate whatever emerges as the price winner,” he said.

But he also has a distinct view of carbon-dioxide emissions—or at least a view closer to the long-term actuarial analysis of utility companies. Because a future Congress or White House will likely impose a policy like the Clean Power Plan, carbon dioxide is a price risk, he says. If he doesn’t move coal out of the fleet now, Arkansas customers may have to pay more for electricity in the future.

“Life is pretty good right now, in utility world,” he said. “Costs as a percentage of personal income are at a multi-decade low, and that’s driven by low [natural] gas prices.”

He continued. “I like low costs, I want to keep low costs, so I have two big risks. One of them is [natural] gas prices going up, and the other one is federal carbon policy. With an administration that at the moment really doesn’t appear to have its act together, that increases carbon risk, because if there’s a backlash in four years, we’re going to have carbon policy. And it will probably be a lot more stringent than the Clean Power Plan.”

Thomas’ best way of avoiding carbon risk is looking into any other fuel source and diversifying, he said. Arkansas is also making policies now for multiple fuels in case any non-gas, non-coal option suddenly catches on. “When these things flip, when they become economic and people start throwing money at them, we want to be deploying—and not litigating policy for two or three years,” he said.