Trump plans to declare a national energy emergency. Here’s what happens next.
Trump plans to declare a national energy emergency. Here’s what happens next.
President Donald Trump has been very busy during his first several days in office, signing executive orders and repealing Biden-era declarations. Trump has also said he will declare a national energy emergency.
Emergency declarations provide the government extra authority to take actions. But an energy emergency? That’s something no other president has declared.
An energy emergency declaration might be unprecedented, but the end goals are not. It’s designed to do three things, said partner David Cherney at PA Consulting Group: “One is streamline the permitting for traditional energy infrastructure, particularly fossil fuel production.”
Two is weakening some of the environmental regulations that hinder fossil fuel production. “And then three is finding measures to help provide some relief at the gas pump if gasoline prices increase over time,” Cherney said.
Those first two goals are especially frustrating to Heather O’Neill, who leads the clean energy industry group Advanced Energy United.
“It’s unfortunate that there’s a whole set of energy resources that aren’t mentioned, and that includes solar and wind, to name two,” she said.
The U.S. does have energy concerns, O’Neill said: increased electricity demand, old infrastructure that needs updating and worsening extreme weather that makes our grid vulnerable.
“So if this is an emergency, why aren’t we using all the tools in the toolbox, particularly the ones that have been proving themselves out over the past handful of years as they’ve come onto the grid?” she asked.
Solar energy, for example, increased nearly eight-fold in the past decade.
On that third goal about gas prices: Right now, there’s a big global supply of oil and not as much demand, so prices aren’t that bad. That’s just one factor that makes this emergency claim dubious, according to Rob Gramlich, president of the power consulting firm Grid Strategies.
“It’s hard to really claim we’re in an emergency when we’re experiencing record levels of oil and gas production,” he said.
There’s been lots of success on expanding electric power, too. “We have all kinds of electric generators that are clamoring to already join the system and provide power. And our bulk power system is still among the best in the world,” Gramlich said.
Instead, he added that it’s more of a means to get some energy policy work done quickly.
“The actual emergency declaration looks to me more like an intent to act and a directive for agencies to find statutory levers they can pull,” Gramlich said.
And it adds up with Trump’s liberal use of executive orders. On his first day in office alone, he signed 26 of them.
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