President Donald Trump’s opening week included a flurry of executive orders seeking to make good on his promise to restore America’s energy dominance, sidelined by the Biden administration.
While we should all applaud the president’s vision for a secure energy future, Californians should be especially pleased. Even before taking office, the “Trump effect” helped restore a bit of sanity in the Golden State.
Five days before President Trump’s inauguration, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) rescinded its application for a waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency to extend its electric vehicle mandate to freight trains, citing “uncertainty presented by the incoming administration.” The first-of-its-kind regulation would have phased out diesel-fueled switch, industrial, and passenger trains by 2030 and freight trains by 2035 in favor of zero-emission trains.
Though now paused, CARB’s rationale for the rail electrification mandate mirrors broader green energy policies, and California will likely seek to revive it under a future Democratic administration. They shouldn’t.
CARB claimed the rule would be a net economic and environmental benefit, but ignored major costs. A report from my organization highlighted the substantial infrastructure upgrades needed to replace diesel engines with electric or hydrogen models. Further, transitioning to electric trains would have challenged the state’s already strained electricity grid. Lastly, the report shows that the emissions reductions CARB touted were greatly exaggerated.
California already has the highest electricity prices in the continental U.S. With more and more devices connecting to the grid, demand is expected to grow by 76% over the next couple of decades.
At the same time, California’s grid has become increasingly unreliable due to policies that force more and more renewables onto the system, exacerbating the risks of continued brownouts and blackouts.
The conversion of rail to zero-emission technologies that rely heavily on electrification would contribute to these problems. The CARB rule assumed the existence of energy infrastructure that simply does not exist.
New transmission and distribution line upgrades and incremental power generation would be necessary to accommodate the load growth necessary to comply with this mandate. Much of that new electricity generation would likely come from natural gas, which already accounts for 39% of the state’s electricity.
CARB’s claim that the switch to electric trains would reduce particulate matter by 7,400 tons, nitrogen oxides by 386,300, and greenhouse gas emissions by 21.6 million metric tons from 2023-2050 is questionable at best. There is no way that power systems, even in California, will be 100% renewable in the timeframe the rule was scheduled to take effect.
And, as already mentioned, new generation capacity would certainly include natural gas.
CARB’s suggested that hydrogen could serve as an alternative to electrification. This switch would also require additional upstream infrastructure, increase costs, and put upward pressure on emissions.
This new hydrogen would not even be “green,” since production from non-conventional resources is nowhere near the scale of hydrogen sourced from natural gas or coal gasification. Developing hydrogen pipelines could also drive emissions and costs higher.
CARB’s locomotive regulation was a high-cost, low-reward gamble. Thanks to President Trump, Californians dodged another disastrous energy policy — before he even took office.
Instead of trying to “Trump-proof” California, Gov. Gavin Newsom should be grateful for the opportunity to scrap more of Sacramento’s costly regulations.
Tom Pyle is the President of the Institute for Energy Research.
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