Trump and Energy: An Exercise in Unseriousness
Wind turbines in the Columbia River Gorge. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
Upon being sworn in as president. Donald Trump immediately declared an energy emergency. The proclamation, issued on January 20th, states that “The energy and critical minerals (“energy”) identification, leasing, development, production, transportation, refining, and generation capacity of the United States are all far too inadequate to meet our Nation’s needs.”
There was a requisite promise to ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ that blatantly harkened back to a slogan from the 2008 presidential campaign. By no means was it the first time Trump reached for the past on energy. His 2016 campaign featured a loud promise to restore coal and coal-mining jobs. Of course, he did no such thing. Coal production in the U.S. continued to decline throughout his first term. During the pandemic in 2020 coal’s share of generation fell below 20 percent for the first time. Last year, solar panels and wind turbines produced more electricity in the U.S. than coal power plants for the first time. Coal production has been under 600 million short tons for years and won’t be increasing anytime soon.
The purported justification for the emergency, inadequate energy supply, is off kilter in that the Trump Administration is simultaneously seeking to stop offshore wind projects. The Biden administration had approved eleven offshore winds projects worth about 19 gigawatts of energy.
As far as oil and natural gas are concerned, the U.S. is already produces more than any other country on Earth. The Trump administration overturned Biden’s pause on new Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) export terminals, however that order didn’t affect terminals that had already been approved and/or under construction. LNG export capacity was already set to about double by 2027. It is unclear how much more capacity will be built even with the reversal of the Biden pause.
The price of oil has been stable for years. Biden spent much of 2022, in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine begging oil companies to increase production. They made it clear then that passing on dividends to shareholders was a higher priority. Investors having previously been burned by the price crash of 2014, weren’t in a rush to see prices drop too much. And that’s the point: fossil fuel companies are ultimately more interested in profit than drilling. For all the positivity oil companies have toward Trump, it has already been reported that without a good rise in prices, an outcome at complete odds with the anti-inflation sentiment currently dominating DC, production will not be picking up. Energy can’t be turned on and off like a faucet. It takes years for new investments to bring up oil and natural gas. It is unlikely Trump will see much from his emergency order.
The surest way to get people in the U.S. at each other’s throats is to make something ‘cultural.’ Energy as identity or ideology has always been an asinine concept (same with other things such as food, beer, cars). It has no real substance either. No state in the U.S. deploys more renewable energy than Texas. At some times of day renewables actually provide the bulk of Texas’ power. Since the Inflation Reduction Act passed, of the four states that have added the most solar power three of them are Texas, Florida, and Arizona. In general, the states with the largest amount of renewables include South Dakota, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Idaho. Trump’s order to pause wind farm projects only applies to public land or offshore. Most renewable energy is built on private land.
As of this writing at least, one area where Trump could have a destructive short-term effect is with tariffs. To take one example, New York State is investing billions in a clean energy transmission line from Quebec, the Champlain Hudson Power Express. It is due to be operational next year. According to the Public Power Coalition, with Trump’s tariffs, New Yorkers will pay an additional $290 million a year for energy. Massachusetts governor Maura Healey estimates that that the tariffs would raise the cost of electricity for ratepayers there by some $100 million. This when, according to the organization Public Grids, some fifty-two million Americans already struggle to pay their energy bills.
The greater problem is not that the energy transition is off, it is that it isn’t happening fast enough. After being flat for decades, electricity demand is spiking in the U.S. due to a combination of electrifying transportation and AI data centers (perhaps DeepSeek’s AI model of using less juice can take some of the edge off AI’s power needs). The U.S. is currently building 20 to 40 gigawatts of renewables every year, but the number needs to get to 70 or 80 a year.
At this point, it is possible that we have developed the low-hanging fruit. According to a study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the country could require up to 10,000 new miles of transmission to switch to clean electricity by 2035. Last year, according to the American Clean Power Association, the country built 255 miles of new transmission line. Community opposition to large renewable projects is becoming more of a factor. The transition will have to include more energy sources including advanced geothermal (which uses fracking technology to reach geothermal deposits).
All this will require a huge increase in public investment. Trump being president for the next few years doesn’t change this a bit. While electricity gets most of the everyday focus, electricity makes up only slightly over 20 percent of world’s total final energy consumption. Vast sectors from concrete to steel need to be decarbonized. The world’s first industrial plant to make green steel is on track to begin production in Boden, Sweden in 2026, with a target of producing 2.5 million metric tons per year and eventually expanding to 4.5 million metric tons.
There is no reason similar efforts shouldn’t be happening in the U.S. Such efforts can be tied to industrial policy and union jobs. Trump’s buffoonish ideas about energy are a hindrance for now but his moment will come and go. This is no time to give up the fight.