America is one of the world’s biggest energy exporters. In terms of energy production and distribution, it’s a super power. To hear President Trump tell it, the U.S. is weak. So weak he’s declared a “National Energy Emergency” and is “Unleashing American Energy,” in a pair of executive orders that will have far reaching consequences for how the nation does business.
The short version is that Trump is undoing everything Biden did and doubling down on a right-wing meme first uttered by Sarah Palin in 2008: “Drill baby drill.”
The first thing both orders do is tell a story about the world we live in. To hear Trump tell it, America is beset on all sides by hostile actors and in dire need of resources. The feckless Biden hampered American energy independence and hurt the common man. “In an effort to harm the American people, hostile state and non-state foreign actors have targeted our domestic energy infrastructure, weaponized our reliance on foreign energy, and abused their ability to cause dramatic swings within international commodity markets,” the “National Emergency” order said.
While it’s true that America’s adversaries abroad often target its energy infrastructure, they aren’t the only ones. There’s no mention in the Order of the multiples times in the past few years that white supremacists have attempted to take down portions of the country’s electric grid.
“The policies of the previous administration have driven our Nation into a national emergency, where a precariously inadequate and intermittent energy supply, and an increasingly unreliable grid, require swift and decisive action,” the order said. “Without immediate remedy, this situation will dramatically deteriorate in the near future due to a high demand for energy and natural resources to power the next generation of technology. The United States’ ability to remain at the forefront of technological innovation.”
Translation: my new friends at Meta and Amazon are building data centers that require a tremendous amount of energy to run and will need all the help they can get. Big Tech is going all in on nuclear, it’s true, but nuclear energy takes a long time to get going. In the short term, companies like Microsoft and Meta will require vast amounts of traditional smoke spewing sources to keep their services alive. Trump’s orders will make that a little easier.
The rest of the “Energy National Emergency” order gives broad “emergency” powers to various government functionaries with the nebulous goal of increasing America’s energy independence and tapping its vast natural resources. The real meat of Trump’s energy policy is in the “Unleashing American Energy” order.
Like the “National Emergency” order, the “Unleashing American Energy” order is laden with right-wing grievances. “In recent years, burdensome and ideologically motivated regulations have impeded the development of these resources, limited the generation of reliable and affordable electricity, reduced job creation, and inflicted high energy costs upon our citizens,” it opens.
The order then promises to undo the damage of the past and restore American prosperity “including for those men and women who have been forgotten by our economy in recent years. It will also rebuild our Nation’s economic and military security, which will deliver peace through strength.”
The list of incoming changes the order will enact is long. Here are some of the highlights.
Early on, the order outlines the plan to “eliminate the ‘electric vehicle (EV) mandate’ and promote true consumer choice.” Tesla and Elon Musk made a lot of money on electric vehicle tax credits, but that income stream will be over soon and Musk’s vehicle company will have to compete on a more level playing field.
Part of the scheme will be “terminating, where appropriate, state emissions waivers that function to limit sales of gasoline-powered automobiles; and by considering the elimination of unfair subsidies and other ill-conceived government-imposed market distortions that favor EVs over other technologies and effectively mandate their purchase by individuals, private businesses, and government entities alike by rendering other types of vehicles unaffordable.”
The next line promises to allow Americans free choice when it comes to a number of consumer goods including light bulbs, washing machines, gas stoves, and toilets. This has long been a Trump-specific complaint. He’s often talked about how the toilets these days aren’t as good as they used to be.
A ban against incandescent light bulbs hit the U.S. in 2023, forcing everyone to use widely hated LEDs. The order doesn’t state that Trump will bring back the old bulbs specifically, but that’s probably what he’s talking about here. And, of course, the order says Americans will be free to keep using gas stovetops. There was a panic among conservative America during the Biden administration over proposed legislation in some states that would phase out gas stovetops in favor of electric ones.
The new order listed 12 Biden-era executive orders it was revoking, including Strengthening the Nation’s Forests, Communities, and Local Economies, Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis, and Rebuilding and Enhancing Programs to Resettle Refugees and Planning for the Impact of Climate Change on Migration.
The new order also eliminated the American Climate Corps. Established in 2023, the American Climate Corps was an interagency venture that would train young people in climate and energy related jobs that would help America. It didn’t quite get off the ground, but the dream was to have young people help install solar panels, work with the U.S. Forest Service combat wildfires, and other similar tasks.
It’s gone now, killed in its crib.
The order also instructs government agencies to stop paying attention to the “social cost of carbon,” a way of thinking about climate change that studies the damage wrought by a single ton of carbon emissions. “The calculation of the ‘social cost of carbon’ is marked by logical deficiencies, a poor basis in empirical science, politicization, and the absence of a foundation in legislation,” the order said. “Its abuse arbitrarily slows regulatory decisions and, by rendering the United States economy internationally uncompetitive, encourages a greater human impact on the environment by affording less efficient foreign energy producers a greater share of the global energy and natural resource market.”
Government agencies have 60 days to remove the social cost of carbon from any of their decision-making processes.
And, of course, the order destroys what remains of the Green New Deal. “All agencies shall immediately pause the disbursement of funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (Public Law 117-169) or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Public Law 117-58), including but not limited to funds for electric vehicle charging stations made available through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program and the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant Program, and shall review their processes, policies, and programs for issuing grants, loans, contracts, or any other financial disbursements of such appropriated funds for consistency with the law and the policy outlined in section 2 of this order,” it said.
Trump and his team really seem to hate electric vehicles.
There’s more to both orders, a lot more. These are just the highlights that give us a broad idea of how America’s energy future will play out. It seems like all the old fossil fuels are in, government-backed economic incentives are out, and America will soon be free of the tyranny of low-flow toilets. Consequences be damned.
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