November 15th, 2024

• Stay up to date on all things energy by visiting the TEA Newsroom.
• America needs Affordable, Reliable, Clean energy security.
• What Trump’s victory could mean for oil companies and climate change policy.
• Trump could cut or weaken incentives for green energy.
• Washington state voters approve pro-natural gas measure.
• The U.S. secures 200 million barrels of oil for strategic reserve.
• TEA: Pennsylvania came through for American energy.
• A Chinese solar giant came to America for a Biden windfall. Then Trump won.
• Trump taps ND Governor Doug Burgum to lead Interior.

The issue: As Donald Trump and J.D. Vance savored their impressive victory last week, the work was already beginning for their term in The White House. One key issue that the new presidential administration will face in January is our nation’s energy policy. Border security and the economy also must be addressed swiftly, but energy policy affects virtually all segments of our country.

Why it matters: President-elect Trump seeks a level playing field, something that has been sorely lacking the past four years. He wasted no time as he selected former New York GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin to serve as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

“We will restore US energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the U.S. the global leader of AI. We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water,” Zeldin posted on X.

These are excellent priorities for the EPA. The Artificial Intelligence point specifically is going to require a lot more electricity.

Existing and hopefully new natural gas plants are the best equipped to handle a boom in demand. Regardless of how the data center buildout evolves, industry officials warned that pipeline capacity will be woefully inadequate unless the legal and regulatory environments improve.

Consider: 

• The EPA in March adopted stricter vehicle emissions standards intended to compel carmakers to make half of new vehicles have zero emissions by 2030.
• The measure is likely to be one of the first that a second Trump administration rolls back.
• The EPA impacts many areas of the economy due to its regulation of the physical environment utilized by businesses and Zeldin is set to have a major role implementing Trump’s revocation of President Biden’s anti-fossil fuels policies.

But the limited margin in the Senate, combined with the  Inflation Reduction Act’s popularity in red states where clean energy projects have already brought economic benefits, suggests that Trump may take a more targeted approach, dismantling specific aspects of the IRA that he views as creating an unfair advantage for renewables over hydrocarbons. Trump is a staunch supporter of free market capitalism and is not in favor of the government picking winners and losers.

Bottom line: With his cabinet selections thus far, President Trump is showing he’s committed to making America energy dominant. That starts by undoing the damage Biden and Harris caused over the past 4 years.

The issue: President-elect Trump’s win is not a ‘setback’ for climate protection, as some Democrats and green advocacy groups claim. There is already a strong sign that cleaner American natural gas will push global emissions down further than the hype and hysteria that have surrounded the green-at-any-cost schemes.

Why it matters: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen suggested that one way to deter Trump from imposing new tariffs is for Europe to buy more liquefied natural gas (LNG) from America. In the first half of this year, the U.S. already provided around 48 percent of the EU’s LNG imports, compared to Russia’s 16 percent.

Consider: 

• The American Energy Alliance congratulated Trump, saying the group looks forward to working with him to “unwind the Biden-Harris administration’s regulatory onslaught on American energy producers.”
• Regarding carbon emissions driving climate change, J.D. Vance said this during the vice presidential debate last month: “Let’s just say that’s true … You’d want to reshore as much American manufacturing as possible and you’d want to produce as much energy as possible in the United States of America because we’re the cleanest economy in the entire world.”
• Then House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year acknowledged America’s clean energy record. “American natural gas is 41% cleaner than Russian natural gas. If we sell more natural gas around the world, global emissions would go down further than any Democrat plan out there.”

Building more LNG export terminals, more pipelines, transmission lines and gas-fired power plants is essential. That would enable the U.S. to produce and deliver more natural gas for use domestically and to ship abroad.

That is exactly what Trump promised he would do. What scares the green crowd is that all this can be done while also improving the air quality in the United States.

Less regulations and more natural gas and oil production helps producers and consumers. It also reduces or hopefully eliminates dirty gas coming in from Russia, Venezuela and The Middle East.

Bottom line: America can become truly energy independent and energy dominant — and at the same time keep reducing harmful emissions. That’s the clean little secret that the climate extremists don’t want you to know.

Prices at the pump are still stuck in neutral. The national average for a gallon of gasoline dropped 1 cent over the past week, now at $3.08. If the average drops beneath $3, it would be the first time since May of 2021 since that has happened.

Hearing On Critical Mineral Bills: On Tuesday, November 19, the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources will have a hearing on several bills addressing critical minerals.

FERC Open Meeting: On Thursday, November 21, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will hold an Open Meeting of the Commission.

“Low-cost, reliable clean energy, which we make in the U.S. better than anywhere in the world … this is the thing that allows our economy to thrive”

-Governor Doug Burgum in an interview with Axios while campaigning for President in 2023.