Offshore Windmills, Paris Climate Accords Likely on Trump’s ‘Day One’ Chopping List

News Analysis

A presidential administration doesn’t have an “energy policy” as much as it puts forth a regulatory framework that sets the playing field for industry to operate within.

President-elect Donald Trump’s energy-related proposals are less specific and more thematic: Across-the-board deregulation to unfetter energy producers, especially oil and gas operators.

In his second White House stint, Trump has pledged to do away with most components in “new green scam” bills, encourage “drill baby drill” fossil fuel development, and seek to dramatically—with the help of a GOP-controlled Senate and House—slash federal regulatory oversight by such agencies as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Energy (DOE).

Among near-certain “Day One” executive actions will be repealing most, if not all, of President Joe Biden’s energy-related administrative actions and rule-making designed to meet his 2035 decarbonized electric grid and 2050 carbon-free air quality goals.

Trump is near-certain to opt the United States out of the Paris Climate Accords as he did after his 2016 election and to reverse the Biden administration’s preference for renewable energy development on federal public land leases.

The president-elect has made it clear he doesn’t like windmills even though his first administration encouraged wind power initiatives. Wind power developers rely on offshore leases in federal waters to build projects.

Trump could issue a moratorium on offshore wind lease sales in federal waters via an executive order, stymying new projects until Congress, if so inclined, revives them under a new regulatory scope.

The president-elect’s proposed tariffs could dramatically raise the costs of already-tariffed imported solar panels, making solar power less affordable.

Trump’s “Drill Baby Drill” mantra may not quickly result in more oil and gas production.

The nation is already the world’s largest oil and gas producer. But Trump maintains he will slash regulatory red tape to a point where domestic producers will set new records in his second administration.

How the commodity market responds to global gas and oil prices determines if that happens, not an administration’s “energy policy.”

However, an in-incoming administration’s open friendliness to the industry could spur confidence in investing resources into projects for future development.

House Republicans already have a road map to energy development spelled out in HR 1, which was adopted in 2023 but never heard in the Senate.

It espouses an “all of the above” palette that does not forsake renewable energies but doesn’t exclusively offer preferred tax incentives and other inducements to one generation source over others.

HR 1 sets forth federal support for oil and gas infrastructure such as pipelines and LNG terminals, boosts nuclear energy development—there’s little difference in Trump’s views on nuclear power than the current administration’s—and calls for regulatory and permitting overhauls to unshackle the nation’s mining industry to reduce reliance on foreign sources for critical and strategic minerals.

That 2023 House energy bill is a likely guide to tracking a second Trump administration’s drive to declutter the energy industry’s regulatory and permitting playing field.

It may prove easier said than done.

Green policy bills adopted by the Democrat-majority Congress—including 2022’s Inflation Reduction, Act (IRA), 2021’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), and CHIPS Act—all include subsidies for solar, wind, and other renewable energy projects and would require a heavy lift in Congress to undo quickly, comprehensively.

Most IRA, BIL, and CHIPS initiatives are baked into regulatory and funding programs that would be difficult to repeal wholescale but, instead, could whither away if a Republican-controlled House and Senate withhold yearly allocations during annual budget deliberations.

Many are tied in with state matching funding and tax credit programs already in various stages of implementation.

There could also be resistance to eliminating or defunding federally incentivized renewable energy initiatives among some Republican senators and representatives from states that have benefited from federal IRA, BIL, and CHIPS funding, meaning rather than with an axe, these measures are likely to be disassembled with a scalpel.