January 21, 2025
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President Trump declares energy ’emergency’ to justify expanded oil and gas drilling
Although mostly symbolic, President Trump’s declaration of an “energy emergency” could deal a major blow to renewable energy development and would step into the Endangered Species Act.
U.S. President Donald Trump signs an executive order during the inaugural parade inside Capital One Arena in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2025.
Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images
Climate wire | Minutes into his second term, President Donald Trump declared a “national energy emergency” and said he would usher in a “golden age” of domestic affordability and global dominance.
Although largely symbolic, the move was a particularly bitter pill for climate change advocates.
Not only are they contesting the need for an energy emergency, as U.S. oil and gas production has been strong over the past few years, but activists are also calling on former President Joe Biden to issue a similar climate emergency. President Trump made the decision on Day 1 after four years of unsuccessful attempts to persuade him to declare a state of affairs. change.
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Colin Rees, U.S. program manager for the activist group Oil Change International, said Trump’s quick response shows he understands the political power of declaring a state of emergency.
His group has been pressuring the Biden administration for years to take similar action on climate change. Reese said his supporters wondered why Biden didn’t take such a step, even if it was just to show his supporters he was taking the threat of unmitigated global warming seriously. He says he thinks it’s strange.
“It would have shown that he was willing to fight and was actually willing to mobilize all the resources within the government,” Rees said.
During his time in office, Biden made climate change a priority for the federal government and helped pass the largest climate bill in U.S. history. But his team resisted calls to declare a state of emergency, even though climate change-induced heat waves, droughts, floods, hurricanes and wildfires have killed thousands of Americans.
Some environmental groups and Democratic lawmakers had hoped that Biden would build on the climate change policies he has enacted so far. They hope Biden will use the climate emergency to halt oil exports, halt offshore oil drilling, reduce U.S. investment in international fossil fuel projects, grow domestic clean energy manufacturing, and combat climate change. The hope was to rebuild renewable energy systems in hard-hit communities.
Meanwhile, President Trump did not wait until the end of his roughly 3,000-word inaugural address to declare an energy emergency.
“We will lower prices, refill strategic reserves to the top, and export American energy around the world,” Trump said in a speech in the Capitol Rotunda.
The energy emergency guts the Endangered Species Act and says Biden’s climate change policies are putting the country at risk and leading to “unreliable, intermittent energy supplies and an increasingly unreliable power grid.” It is stated without any evidence. This emergency created a definition of energy that does not include wind and solar, and the heads of major federal agencies used their authority to “identify, lease, locate, produce, transport, refine, and generate domestic energy resources.” He argues that there is a need to “promote” Democratic governors and state legislators, particularly on the West and East Coasts, are blocking some fossil fuel infrastructure. It faces significant legal battles in the coming months and years.
Michael Gerrard, a professor at Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said Trump won’t be able to fully implement his energy policy with the stroke of a pen, no matter the language.
Many of these will be decided in the coming years, after intense battles in the courts and Congress.
“A state of emergency provides very little additional powers,” Gerrard said. “As a general matter, we’re not allowing him to override federal or state law. There are some specific things he can do, but they’re very limited on the energy side.”
This could include banning the import and export of certain types of energy or using the Defense Production Act to manufacture energy equipment. Still, Gerrard said the energy emergency declaration was ultimately “more performative than substantive”.
President Trump said Monday that the United States is in an energy crisis as part of his rationale for declaring a state of emergency. But on his first day, President Trump took steps to sideline the clean energy sector. Even though the sector has expanded significantly during President Biden’s term, experts say clean energy still has the potential to increase America’s energy independence.
The Department of Energy estimates that the country has enough renewable energy potential to meet 100 times the annual energy needs of the United States.
But President Trump has taken a dim view of clean energy, particularly wind power. His office notified reporters on Monday that Trump would move to halt development of both onshore and offshore wind power.
This move will likely slow, but not stop, America’s clean energy expansion. But Oil Change International’s Reese said President Trump’s avalanche of energy policies shows that American conservatives currently have an advantage in getting their message to voters.
“I think this is an indicator of how well the right is doing in politics right now,” Reese said. “Trump has a better understanding of the intersection of politics and energy.”
Reprinted from E&E News Published with permission of POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides news that matters to energy and environment professionals.
