Legal experts said the president was testing the boundaries of executive power with aggressive orders designed to stop the country from transitioning to renewable energy.
President Donald J. Trump signing executive orders at the White House on Monday.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
President Trump is moving to restructure the nation’s energy future to block any transition away from fossil fuels. And he is testing the boundaries of presidential power to do it.
The orders that Mr. Trump signed on Monday would make it easier and cheaper for companies to produce oil and gas and for the government to stop clean energy projects that have been approved.
While some actions lie within his purview, others may violate federal law or run counter to judicial decisions. Among other things, Mr. Trump raised the possibility of reversing the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, which has been confirmed by the Supreme Court, and proposed to halt funding for electric vehicle charging stations that Congress has already authorized.
“Congress passed landmark infrastructure and climate investments, and now President Trump is attempting to illegally withhold that money from American businesses, communities, and workers,” said Representative Frank Pallone, Democrat of New Jersey.
The moves also underscore a fundamental tension. Mr. Trump declared that the United States is facing an energy emergency, yet wants to block thousands of megawatts of planned wind projects that could power homes and businesses. He talks about strengthening American manufacturing but plans to withdraw assistance from the electric vehicle industry, which has invested billions of dollars in new factories across the United States.
“The phrase ‘energy emergency’ is an excuse to put in place initiatives that are hostile to the energy transition that is already taking place, to stop the progress that has been made in producing solar and wind power, electric vehicles, batteries, and renewable power,” said Robert N. Stavins, director of the Harvard University Environmental Economics Program.
By any economic measure, the United States is not facing an energy emergency, experts said. America is the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas, and the price of oil, about $76 per barrel, is roughly the same as the average cost over the past 20 years, adjusted for inflation. The cost of gasoline, about $3.13 per gallon, has dropped about 3 percent over the past 12 months.
But, Dr. Stavins added, “If there really were an energy emergency, then the right thing to do would be to increase supplies of all forms of energy, and to try to use energy conservation initiatives” — like stricter efficiency standards for vehicles and household appliances like dishwashers and stoves — to decrease demand. Instead, Mr. Trump’s executive orders are aimed at loosening those requirements so appliances would use more energy and cars would burn more gasoline.
A gas station in Seattle. The cost of gasoline, about $3.13 cents per gallon, has dropped about 3 percent over the past 12 months.
The oil and gas industry donated more than $75 million to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign and Mr. Trump, in turn, promised to shred environmental regulations to lower their costs and increase their margins. He pledged to give them virtually unfettered access to American lands and waters. At one fund-raising dinner in the spring, Mr. Trump told oil and gas executives they should donate $1 billion to his campaign and said they would recoup more than that in lowered taxes, lower costs and higher profits.
“There’s an increased sense of confidence that our costs of doing business aren’t going to rise,” said Steve Pruett, chief executive of Elevation Resources LLC, an oil and gas producer in West Texas.
Although some executives worry that increased drilling could lead to an oil glut that could lower prices and profits, most don’t want to be restricted in terms of where they can explore and drill. And many don’t want to see wind and solar power and electric vehicles flourish in a way that would lower demand for fossil fuels.
“This is a new day for American energy, and we applaud President Trump for moving swiftly to chart a new path where U.S. oil and natural gas are embraced, not restricted,” said Mike Sommers, the president of the American Petroleum Institute, an industry trade group.
While former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. made the fight against climate change a priority and worked to steer the United States away from fossil fuels, the burning of which is heating the planet, Mr. Trump is intent on a sharp U-turn.
His definition of energy is limited almost entirely to fossil fuels, although he makes exceptions for hydropower, geothermal and nuclear power. One executive order said that the phrase “energy resources” was defined as “crude oil, natural gas, lease condensates, natural gas liquids, refined petroleum products, uranium, coal, biofuels, geothermal heat, the kinetic movement of flowing water, and critical minerals.”
There was no mention of solar panels, wind turbines or battery storage, which are three of the fastest-growing sources of electric capacity in the United States.
Chris Wright, a fracking executive who is Mr. Trump’s choice to lead the Energy Department, summed up the position of many Republicans when he said in 2023, “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition, either.”
Pressed by Democrats at his Senate confirmation hearing last week, Mr. Wright clarified that he believed climate change was “a global challenge that we need to solve.” He told lawmakers that he supported all forms of energy, including renewable sources, but that fossil fuels would continue to dominate energy systems for some time.
A solar farm near Herald, Calif. In the United States last year, solar panels and wind turbines produced more electricity than coal-fired power plants for the first time.
Mr. Trump’s order “expressly states that the administration may terminate or amend existing wind energy leases, and we think there may be sufficient authority to do so,” said Timothy Fox, a managing director at ClearView Energy Partners, a consulting firm.
But experts said that other directives were vulnerable to legal challenges.
For example, by declaring a national energy emergency, Mr. Trump is claiming the authority to bypass environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act in order to speed up approvals for drilling, mining, pipelines or other facilities for oil, gas or coal.
Patrick Parenteau, an emeritus professor of environmental law at the Vermont Law School, said the law defines an emergency as an imminent threat to life and property.
“These emergency provisions are for disasters like what is happening in the Palisades,” Mr. Parenteau said, referring to the fires raging through Los Angeles. “They’re not for ‘because I want to drill, baby, drill’,” he said.
Whether Mr. Trump’s actions survive could depend on the federal courts, where hundreds of Trump-appointed judges could hear cases.
“Litigation is guaranteed,” said Jody Freeman, the director of the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program and a former Obama White House official. But, she added, the Trump administration “may say ‘we’re prepared to roll the dice.’”
Mr. Trump has also directed federal agencies to eliminate the “social cost of carbon,” a little-known but powerful metric used by the government to defend the cost of environmental regulations. It refers to the economic harm caused by drought, floods, fires and other events made worse by climate change.
The Biden administration had calculated the cost at $190 per ton of carbon dioxide and used that number to defend the cost to industry of limiting carbon dioxide from tailpipes and smokestacks. The executive order signed by President Trump on Monday said the calculation was “marked by logical deficiencies, a poor basis in empirical science, politicization, and the absence of a foundation in legislation.”
Richard Revesz, who helped set the cost under the Biden administration, said the executive order was irrational. “Literally nothing within that paragraph makes any sense at all,” he said, adding that the calculation relied on the work of William Nordhaus, the economist who developed the concept of the social cost of carbon.
“How could you call the reliance on the work of a Nobel Prize winner a poor basis in empirical science?” Mr. Revesz said.
Abigail Dillen, the president of Earthjustice, an environmental group, called Mr. Trump’s executive orders “completely out of touch” for a president who wants the United States to dominate the future.
“Perhaps the biggest race for the future is who will command clean energy,” Ms. Dillen said. “Even if you want to see more drilling, if you’re in the majority of Americans, you also want to see clean energy move forward.”
