Along with border security, one issue Republican presidential candidates are relentlessly attacking President Joe Biden over is the economy. And much of their gripes on that front center on Biden’s energy policies.

That was evident again Friday during Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds’ Fair-Side Chats with White House hopefuls at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines. 

“We did it before, we'll do it again: We're going to unleash American energy and allow the American people to achieve American energy independence and dominance once again,” said former Vice President Mike Pence.

Conservatives view Biden’s vision of transitioning the country to cleaner energy sources to mitigate the effects of climate change as an assault on the oil, gas and coal industries that is raising energy prices for Americans.

As Pence did, they often claim the United States was energy independent under former President Donald Trump, although the country was never fully self-sufficient then and FactCheck.org found last year that even if looser definitions of “energy independent” are used, the U.S. did not lose that distinction after Biden took over.

But it’s remains a popular talking point on campaign trails. 

Pence this week unveiled his energy policy plan, which calls for expanding the production and distribution of U.S. energy with the goal of overtaking China as the world’s leading energy producer. In the plan, he attacks the Biden administration for using taxpayer dollars to subsidize green energy sources. Criticizing government efforts to limit oil, coal and gas production, Pence says he would not pick winners and losers in the energy market if he were president.

Meanwhile Friday, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum vowed that if he’s elected, his administration would, on his first day, “start selling energy to our friends and allies [and] stop buying it from our adversaries.”

He said the Biden administration’s efforts promoting electric vehicles resemble an energy policy designed by China because it controls a large share of the rare earth minerals used in electric vehicle batteries.

“If you're trying to go all electric vehicles, it's basically a war on liquid fuels. That’s what it is,” Burgum said. “And if it's a war on liquid fuels, it's a war on America, it’s a war on manufacturing, it's a war on everybody that drives a vehicle, it's a war on farmers, it's a war on people that raise corn for ethanol. 

“And it makes no sense because if you care about the environment, you'd want to have every ounce of energy produced here because we produce it cleaner, safer and smarter than anybody else in the world,” he added.

Most GOP candidates — including Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy — also have campaigned on the promise of achieving energy independence, which environmentalists interpret as doubling down on climate-warming fossil fuels. 

During a speech Wednesday in New Mexico, Biden complained that far-right Republicans are trying to reverse his policies aimed at investing in clean energy and making the country more resilient to climate change.

White House spokesman Andrew Bates sent an email this week to reporters accusing Republicans of continuing to deny climate change despite extreme weather events becoming more intense and frequent. He said Biden “is taking bold, historic steps to turn the climate crisis into the job-creation and competitiveness engine we need to rebuild the middle class and lead the world economy.”

“The alternative that GOP officeholders are putting forward is to worsen climate pollution, lose more Americans to extreme weather, and kill and offshore the good-paying jobs that Bidenomics is delivering in manufacturing and clean energy,” wrote Bates, who focused his criticism on members of Congress, not presidential candidates.

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, the third candidate to be interviewed by Reynolds on Friday, did not discuss energy or climate change at length. In the brief remarks he made, he said, “It’s really beautiful to watch as an American to see this innovation creating cleaner and cheaper fuels to power our country,” including biofuels.