Trump plans to sign “nearly 100” executive orders: follow live

Mr. Trump also said he planned to declare a national energy emergency. He would be the first president to do so, even though the United States currently produces more oil and natural gas than any other country. The declaration could unlock the power to suspend certain environmental regulations and expedite oil and gas drilling permits, as well as the power to keep coal-fired power plants operating.

“We’re going to drill, baby, drill,” Mr. Trump said at the Capitol after being sworn in.

Mr. Trump’s shift toward fossil fuels comes after the hottest year on record and, as scientists say, the world is running out of time to keep global warming at relatively low levels. Last year, emissions from burning coal, oil and gas helped push global average temperatures past 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above levels pre-industrial. Scientists have said that every fraction of a degree of warming above this level brings increased risks of deadly heat waves, wildfires, drought, storms and species extinctions.

Most of Mr. Trump’s energy policies cannot be implemented with the stroke of a pen, as some would require action by federal agencies or Congress and others could face legal challenges. Nor could he, by executive order, rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, or Alaska’s Denali, the highest peak in North America, as Mount McKinley. Mr. Trump has promised to do both.

But taken together, these statements underscore how Mr. Trump views the world: America has been weakened by efforts to combat climate change, oil and gas are symbols of strength and power, and Abundance of fossil fuels will ensure that the United States is able to dominate its allies. and its rivals.

The United States is home to “the most oil and gas of any country in the world, and we’re going to use it,” Mr. Trump said during his inaugural address. “We will lower prices, refill our strategic reserves to the top, and export American energy around the world. »

The remarks drew a standing ovation in the Capitol Rotunda, where Mr. Trump spoke, and applause at the Hay-Adams Hotel in downtown Washington, where some of the top oil and gas executives of the countries sipped champagne and ate mini Pop-Tart pastries with Mr. Trump’s image. The party was sponsored by Harold Hamm, the billionaire founder of Continental Resources, an oil company, who helped raise millions of dollars for Mr. Trump’s campaign.

Mr. Trump’s agenda was the opposite of his predecessor’s approach. Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. called climate change an existential threat and said the United States, the world’s largest historic emitter of greenhouse gases, had an obligation to lead world in reducing pollution from fossil fuels.

Mr. Biden has never sought an immediate end to coal, oil or gas. But he imposed regulations making it more expensive to operate coal plants, limited future drilling leases and signed laws that invested hundreds of billions of dollars in wind, solar, electric vehicles and more. other low-carbon technologies to lay the foundations for a transition to the future. from fossil fuels.

“We’ve really advanced the clean energy transition in a very big way,” said Deb Haaland, Mr. Biden’s Interior secretary. Mr. Biden “really understood that he had a responsibility to do what he could to fight the climate crisis,” she said.

Mr. Trump’s efforts to reshape the U.S. energy landscape could clash with market realities. U.S. oil production reached new highs last year and natural gas prices fell to their lowest average annual level on record, adjusted for inflation, according to the Energy Information Administration. While many oil and gas companies have called for easing regulations, they have also said they are not looking to drastically increase production because that would most likely weigh on prices and reduce profits. By mid-afternoon Monday, U.S. oil prices had fallen more than 1 percent as details of Mr. Trump’s energy plans were revealed.

“If there is more energy production, you might see lower prices,” Jacques White, a Colorado petroleum engineer, said at Mr. Hamm’s party.

During his first term, Mr. Trump’s cabinet secretaries rushed to repeal environmental regulations, leading to many of those efforts being overturned in court.

Some experts also question whether Mr. Trump’s declaration of a national energy emergency would be more symbolic than substantive.

“It’s not clear what the urgency is,” said Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. “The United States produces more oil and gas than ever, more than any other country in the world, we don’t have gas lines, we don’t have widespread power outages. ” He called the emergency order “essentially performative.”

On a call with reporters, a White House official said the emergency declaration was motivated by the idea that energy costs in the United States are currently higher than they should be in reason for the political decisions of the Biden administration. Interest in artificial intelligence and the boom in data center construction have created an urgent need for more power, the official said.

Legal experts have identified about 150 emergency powers that a president could invoke under certain conditions, such as suspending certain air pollution requirements or ordering the release of certain raw materials from strategic stockpiles. But many of these powers are relatively limited. During his first term, Mr. Trump proposed invoking certain emergency powers to prevent the closure of unprofitable coal and nuclear power plants, but that effort was ultimately abandoned.

Some climate activists had pushed Mr. Biden to declare a national emergency around climate change, but legal experts concluded that it “wouldn’t really unblock the great powers,” said Daniel Farber, a law professor at the University of California in Berkeley.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump promised to free up oil and gas production and eliminate the “Green New Deal,” his catch-all term for Mr. Biden’s climate policy. This, he promised, would halve food and energy prices within 18 months of his inauguration.

Environmental groups and a coalition of mayors and governors said Monday that many states, cities and businesses will continue to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions on their own.

“The clean energy boom is unstoppable,” said Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Trump can slow the transition but he can’t stop it.”

Mr. Trump is expected to order federal agencies to recoup all unspent funds under the Inflation Reduction Act, a sweeping climate and clean energy bill that Mr. Biden signed into law in 2022.

However, in recent months, Biden administration officials have rushed to finalize contracts for more than $96.7 billion, or 84% of the law’s clean energy subsidies, meaning that the Money cannot be easily withdrawn. This includes $8.8 billion for state programs to help consumers buy energy-efficient appliances, $3 billion to reduce air pollution at U.S. ports and $9 billion to help rural electricity providers to shift from burning coal and gas to alternatives like wind, solar and nuclear power.

That still leaves about $11 billion in grants and other spending that hasn’t been finalized, including funds for agricultural conservation and a program to help reduce pollution in disadvantaged communities.

At the same time, the vast majority of spending in the Inflation Reduction Act, potentially hundreds of billions of dollars, goes through tax credits that companies can qualify for if they use or manufacture technology. carbon capture or various low-carbon energy sources, including wind, solar, batteries, hydrogen, nuclear and geothermal.

Repealing those credits would require Congress to act, and some Republicans whose districts benefited from the spending said at least some of the tax breaks should remain in place.

Mr. Trump, a longtime critic of wind power, has also pledged to end federal leases for large wind farms in federal waters.

The Biden administration has already approved 11 commercial-scale wind farms in the Atlantic Ocean. Some are currently under construction, but others have been halted or experienced delays due to inflation or supply chain issues. Several Eastern states – including Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York – have set ambitious renewable energy goals and hoped to build many more offshore wind farms this decade. Other projects, however, would require federal approval.