President Donald Trump enacted numerous energy-focused executive policies on Monday, and energy sector experts described the actions as aiming directly at the heart of the Biden administration’s climate agenda in interviews with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Among other policy shifts, Trump declared that the U.S. will pull out of the Paris Climate Accords, freeze new offshore wind farms, rip up regulation forcing electric vehicles (EVs) on consumers and examine possible options to vacate the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 2009 endangerment finding that greenhouse gases threaten public health. The deluge of new policies sends a clear message that the U.S. is totally reversing course from the Biden administration’s affinity for climate regulation and green spending, with potential to massively change the American economy if executed in full.
“There’s a lot of things you can do around the edges on climate policy and changing from one polarity to the other. A lot of these orders didn’t work around the edges. They are going straight to the heart,” Kevin Book, a managing director at ClearView Energy Partners, told the DCNF. “One of the parts of the ‘unleashing energy’ order is to look at undoing the 2009 endangerment finding that is the foundation for essentially the greenhouse gas regulation that is promulgated through the Clean Air Act … That sends a pretty unmistakable message. That’s a shot straight at the heart of not just Biden’s climate policy, but Obama’s.”
In Book’s view, some of Trump’s day one energy moves, like pausing the flow of cash from former President Joe Biden’s signature climate bill and lifting the prior administration’s freeze on certain liquefied natural gas (LNG) export hubs, will be able to be implemented relatively quickly, while others — such as completing formal withdrawal from the Paris agreement — will take longer to play out.
Markets, governments and global institutions certainly took notice of Trump’s loud declaration that the U.S. is completely pivoting on energy policy and climate change. European offshore wind developers building projects off America’s coasts saw their share prices dive Tuesday, while China — by far the world’s leading emitter — chided the U.S. for pulling out of the Paris agreement.
Other energy policy moves Trump took almost immediately upon the end of his inaugural ceremony include moving to open up energy production in Alaska, instructing agency heads to identify regulations presenting any “undue burden” to energy development and declaring that he will pursue policies that “empower consumer choice in vehicles, showerheads, toilets, washing machines, lightbulbs and dishwashers.”
Steve Milloy, a senior policy fellow for the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, believes that Trump’s intention to potentially rip up the 2009 endangerment finding is the most significant announced to date, “because if we get rid of that, climate idiocy across the government ends because then there’s nothing to point back to.”
“A lot of this stuff is going to take time. Rolling back Biden regulations is going to take time, you have to review public opinion and then make a final decision. Then it’s going to be litigated, and all this stuff, I’m sure, will be litigated. It’s going to take time to issue the rules, and then survive litigation,” Milloy told the DCNF. “But on the other hand, a lot of the energy production items — lease sales, permit writing — that kind of stuff can go ahead, and can go ahead immediately. So, what’s immediate is that there will be no more federal agency obstructionism for fossil fuel development. That is over. That was over Monday.”
Frank Maisano, a senior principal at Bracewell LLP, told the DCNF that the pro-energy, pro-innovation, pro-technology tenor of the Trump energy agenda in action is meaningful to private sector observers and the pursuit of energy security. Maisano said he thinks nixing the endangerment finding may prove to be a tall task, but Trump’s overall “more rational policy” could strengthen the U.S. globally in ways that pulling out of the Paris agreement or undoing the endangerment finding may not.
“This is symbolic, and it’s agenda-setting. We knew the president had energy at the top of his agenda — not at the very top, but near the top — because of the importance that it has in driving both our jobs and our dominance around the world,” Maisano told the DCNF. “It’s a perfect fit for him to step in and change the direction the administration was in, because the previous administration, frankly, was wanting in terms of their ability to have a coherent policy. Their policy was focused on addressing activists who were willing to protest them and keep pressure on them to have some policy that is unrealistic and undermines our energy security.”
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