Timothy Gardner, Valerie Volcovici and Andrea Shalal
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Monday outlined a sweeping plan to maximize oil and gas production, including declaring a national energy emergency to speed up permitting, repealing environmental protections and withdrawing the U.S. from an international climate pact change.
The moves signal a dramatic U-turn in Washington’s energy policy after former President Joe Biden spent four years trying to spur a transition away from fossil fuels in the world’s largest economy. But it remains to be seen whether Trump’s measures will have any impact on US output, which is already at record levels as drillers chase high prices following sanctions on Russia following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
“America will be a manufacturing nation again, and we have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have: the most oil and gas of any country on Earth,” Trump said during his inaugural address.
“And we’ll use it.”
Trump later signed executive orders declaring a national energy emergency and withdrawing the United States from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, an international pact to combat global warming. He also signed orders aimed at promoting oil and gas development in Alaska, reversed Biden’s efforts to protect vast Arctic lands and US coastal waters from drilling, reversed Biden’s EV adoption goal, and halted the sale of offshore wind leases.
Trump said he expects the orders to help lower consumer energy prices and improve US national security by expanding domestic supply and strengthening allies.
“We will lower prices, refill our strategic reserves to the top, and export American energy around the world,” he said.
Environmental groups have said they intend to challenge the executive order in court.
The Biden administration has seen electric vehicle and wind energy technologies as key to efforts to decarbonize the transportation and energy sectors, which together account for about half of America’s carbon dioxide emissions.
The Biden administration has sought to encourage the use of electric vehicles by offering consumers subsidies to buy new electric vehicles and by imposing stricter tailpipe emissions standards on automakers. He also sought to boost clean energy technologies like wind and solar through tax breaks that attracted billions of dollars in new generation and project investment.
The Democratic National Committee called Trump’s agenda “a disaster for working families.”
“Eliminating manufacturing jobs and giving free rein to pollutants that make people sick is hardly putting ‘America first,'” said Alex Floyd, DNC spokesman.
RENOVATION OF THE ELECTRIC PLANT
Trump has repeatedly said during his campaign that he intends to declare a national energy emergency, arguing that the US should produce more fossil fuels and also increase electricity generation to meet rising demand.
U.S. data center energy use, a major driver of rising electricity demand, could nearly triple in the next three years and consume as much as 12% of the nation’s electricity to fuel artificial intelligence and other technologies, according to the Department of Energy.
Trump’s statement seeks to ease environmental restrictions on power plants to meet that demand, speed up construction of new plants and ease permitting for transmission and pipeline projects.
“It allows you to do whatever you have to do to pre-empt that problem,” Trump told reporters as he signed the order. “And we do have that kind of emergency.”
Sam Sankar, senior vice president for programs at Earthjustice, a nonprofit group preparing to fight Trump’s policies in court, said declaring an energy emergency in a time without war is rare and unchecked, creating a potential legal vulnerability.
The first Trump administration considered using emergency powers under the Federal Powers Act to try to make good on a promise to save the collapsing coal industry, but never did.
Trump’s pledge to replenish strategic reserves, meanwhile, has the potential to lift oil prices by boosting oil demand.
After the invasion of Ukraine, Biden sold more than 180 million barrels of crude oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a record amount.
The sales helped keep gasoline prices under control, but the reserve – designed to protect the United States from a potential supply shock – sank to its lowest level in 40 years.