Trump to unleash American fossil fuels, halt climate co-operation

President Donald Trump on Monday laid out a sweeping plan to maximise oil and gas production, including by declaring a national energy emergency to speed up permitting, rolling back environmental protections, and withdrawing the US 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. However, it remains to be seen if Trump's measures will have any impact on US production, 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 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.”

Trump later signed executive orders declaring a national energy emergency and withdrawing the US from the 2015 Paris climate deal, the international pact to fight global warming. He also signed orders aimed at promoting oil and gas development in Alaska, reversing Biden's efforts to protect Arctic lands and US coastal waters from drilling, revoking Biden's target for EV adoption, suspending offshore wind lease sales and lifting a freeze on liquified natural gas export permitting.

Trump said he expects the orders to help reduce consumer energy prices and improve US national security by expanding domestic supplies and bolstering allies.

“We will bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves 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.

The Biden administration had seen electric vehicle and wind energy technologies as crucial to efforts to decarbonise the transportation and power sectors, which together make up around half of US carbon dioxide emissions.

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 such as wind and solar through tax credits that have drawn billions in new manufacturing and project investments.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) 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 said repeatedly during his campaign he intends to declare an energy emergency, arguing the US should produce more fossil fuels and ramp up power generation to meet demand.

US data centre power use, a major driver of growing electricity demand, could nearly triple in the next three years, and consume as much as 12% of the country's power to fuel artificial intelligence and other technologies, according to the department of energy.

Trump's declaration seeks to ease environmental restrictions on power plants to meet the demand, speed up construction of new plants and ease permitting for transmission and pipeline projects.

“It allows you to do whatever you’ve got to do to get ahead of the problem,” Trump told reporters while signing the order.

“And we do have that kind of an emergency.”

Sam Sankar, senior vice-president for programmes at Earthjustice, a nonprofit group 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 declining coal industry, but never followed through.

Trump's promise to refill strategic reserves, meanwhile, has the potential to lift oil prices by boosting demand for US crude oil.

After the invasion of Ukraine, Biden had sold more than 180-million barrels of crude oil from the US strategic petroleum reserve, a record amount.

The sales helped keep fuel prices in check, but sank the reserve — designed to buffer the US from a potential supply shock — to the lowest level in 40 years.

Reuters