Chris Wright, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be secretary of energy, testifies during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., January 15, 2025.
WASHINGTON--President Donald Trump on Monday laid out a sweeping plan to maximize U.S. oil and gas production - including by declaring a national energy emergency, stripping away regulation, and withdrawing the U.S. from an international pact to fight climate change.
The moves signal a dramatic U-turn in Washington’s energy policy after former President Joe Biden sought for four years to encourage a transition away from fossil fuels in the world's largest economy. But it remains to be seen if the measures will have any impact on production, which is already at record levels as drillers chase high prices in the wake of sanctions on Russia after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. "America will be a manufacturing nation once again, and we have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have: the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth," Trump said during his inauguration speech. "And we are going to use it." He later signed the executive orders declaring a national energy emergency and withdrawing the United States from the 2015 Paris climate deal, an international pact to fight global warming. He also signed orders aimed at promoting oil and gas development in Alaska and reversing Biden's efforts to protect vast Arctic lands and U.S. coastal waters from drilling. Trump said he expects the orders to help reduce consumer prices and improve U.S. national security. "We will bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again, right to the top, and export American energy all over the world," he said. Environmental groups have said they intend to challenge the executive orders in court. Trump has also said he intends to reverse what he called Biden's electric vehicle mandates, and put a stop to new wind power development. The Biden administration had seen those technologies as crucial to efforts to decarbonize the transportation and power sectors, which together make up around half of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. "We're not going to do the wind thing," Trump said, calling windmills ugly, expensive, and harmful to wildlife. "Big, ugly windmills. They ruin your neighborhood." Biden's administration sought to encourage electric vehicle use by offering a consumer subsidy for new EV purchases, and by imposing tougher tailpipe emissions standards on automakers. It also sought to encourage clean energy technologies like wind and solar through taxpayer subsidies that have drawn billions of dollars in new manufacturing and project investments. The Democratic National Committee called Trump's day one agenda a disaster for working families. "Killing manufacturing jobs and giving a free pass to polluters that make people sick is hardly putting ‘America first,'" said Alex Floyd, DNC spokesperson. Trump had vowed during his campaign to declare a national energy emergency, arguing the U.S. should produce more fossil fuels and also modernize electrical infrastructure and ramp up power generation to meet rising demand. U.S. data center power use, for example, could nearly triple in the next three years, and consume as much as 12% of the country's electricity on demand from AI and other technologies, according to the Department of Energy. Trump's declaration seeks to ease environmental restrictions on power plants, speed up construction of new plants, ease permitting for transmission and pipeline projects, and open up new federal lands to development. "It allows you to do whatever you’ve got to do to get ahead of that problem," Trump said while signing the order. "And we do have that kind of an emergency." Sam Sankar, senior vice president for programmes at Earthjustice, a non-profit group which is gearing up to fight Trump policies in the courts, said the declaration of an energy emergency in a non-war period is rare and untested, creating a potential legal vulnerability. The first Trump administration had considered using emergency powers under the Federal Power Act to attempt to carry out a pledge to rescue the coal industry, but never followed through. Trump's promise to refill strategic reserves - a stockpile designed to buffer the United States from a potential supply shock - has the potential to lift oil prices by boosting demand for U.S. crude oil. After the invasion of Ukraine, Biden had sold more than 180 million barrels of crude oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a record amount. The sales helped keep gasoline prices in check, but sank the reserve to the lowest level in 40 years.
