DAVID BLACKMON: Trump Is Most Consequential Energy President In US History

Just eight months into his second presidency, a strong case can be made that President Donald Trump must now be considered the most consequential energy president in U.S. history. A convergence of major recent international events helps prove the case.

New Lloyd’s of London CEO Patrick Tiernan moved this week to scrap the net-zero policies invoked by his predecessor, an obvious concession to the sea change in energy and climate policy direction underway in the second presidency of  Trump.

Lloyd’s previous CEO, John Neal, put in place policies requiring that participants in the Lloyd’s insurance market quit insuring energy projects that don’t conform to the net-zero goals laid out by the 2016 Paris Climate Accords by the year 2030. Neal further pledged to transform the entire Lloyd’s insurance market into a pure net-zero business model by 2050.

“It is important that Lloyd’s remains apolitical,” Tiernan said of the company’s change in direction. “The 2050 targets are government targets. We operate in multiple jurisdictions under different governments with different targets. We have to operate under the policies and the laws of where we operate.”

Obviously, the policies and laws in the United States, the market in which so many Lloyd’s insurers maintain major interests, have undergone a seismic shift since Mr. Trump took office in January, a shift that seems destined to continue for at least the next 40 months, and possibly for years longer. Trump’s policy turnabout has had major impacts on the U.S. energy picture starting almost from his first day in office, and now the impacts are being felt internationally.

This move by Lloyd’s is far from the only recent signal that major changes are underway. Another bit of proof came from British major oil company Shell, which announced on Wednesday it will abandon its