Under the future Donald Trump administration, the phrases “climate change” and “energy transition” will almost certainly disappear from White House policy. But clean energy advocates and industry players aren’t so sure all of Joe Biden’s climate policies will disappear.
Biden’s most aggressive energy programs were not only pitched as solutions for climate change but also as ways to increase competitiveness with China, incentivize manufacturing and create jobs in struggling coal communities. Now, climate experts and those working in the energy sector are starting to whisper: Who cares what it’s called if it gets the job done?
“If it has to be in the name of reliability and resiliency or national security or whatever, pick your flag — I don’t really care,” said Jackson Morris, the director of state power sector policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
That’s the pitch that a coalition of domestic minerals companies brought to Congress this week: The industry, and the subsidies created for it during the Biden administration primarily in the name of climate change, must now be protected for national security and for competitiveness with China. Dave Howell, a longtime veteran of the Department of Energy who worked in the first Trump administration and now represents this coalition, is convinced that officials in the second administration will embrace that angle.
While these companies won support from the Biden administration primarily because of their importance to the nascent American EV industry, they are now using different language in their conversations with members of Congress. They’re also trying to change the media narrative, which has been heavily focused on the importance of critical minerals for EVs.
“The first time that we started talking about critical minerals was under the first Trump administration. They liked it. Then the Biden administration liked it and put some money behind it. I find strong reason to believe that the Trump administration will continue to like it, but I think with a focus on national security, really on the race to be the first, the best, the strongest,” said Carmen Rene, the chief financial officer for lithium company EnergySource Minerals.
Environmental policy experts are still warning that progress to sharply lower carbon emissions in the United States will be hampered by Trump’s pledges to undo Biden’s aggressive climate agenda. Trump and congressional Republicans have promised to repeal Biden’s signature climate policies under the Inflation Reduction Act, halt approvals for wind, nix electric vehicle subsidies, roll back new and aggressive greenhouse gas environmental regulations, cut staff from the executive agencies and expand oil and gas leasing and production, among other changes.
But in private conversations, lobbyists and experts are noting that a few of the largest barriers remaining for the clean energy transition could be further torn down under Trump, including permitting reform, a massive grid build-out, investment in nuclear and advanced geothermal and programs for hydrogen and carbon capture and storage. (There are two massive exceptions: offshore wind and electric vehicles. These two industries are preparing for the Trump administration to quickly end any incentives, approvals and rules that are helping to prop up their nascent development.)
“There’s going to be a lot of repeal and change direction noise and then maybe action, and then programs may reappear with a different name or different packaging,” said Mary Anne Sullivan, a former general counsel for the Department of Energy and an attorney at Hogan Lovells.
“We’re going to have a period when it’s like, ‘We don’t want to do any of this.’ That’s going to be the word from leadership,” she said. “But you only have to look at how far ahead of the U.S. China got on solar to know that’s not going to be sustainable.”
For example, the leaders in the renewable, advanced and traditional energy sectors all agree on the need for reforms to the National Environmental Policy Act. Both Democratic Rep. Scott Peters and Republican Sen. John Barrasso, two of the leading negotiators on House and Senate permitting reform bills, told NOTUS that they believe there’s bipartisan support to get permitting reform done in the lame duck. Should that effort fail, Republicans have long advocated for aggressive permitting reform and are now pitching creative ways to pass it through reconciliation in order to avoid the filibuster.
And Trump and Republicans in Congress are already pledging aggressive competition with China, which has stepped far ahead of the U.S. on clean energy technology development and proliferation throughout the world.
“There’s a through line there, from 2016 to 2020 and to 2024,” said Harry Godfrey, the federal policy lead at clean energy group Advanced Energy United. “You can see these institutions get some bipartisan support continuing onto the Trump administration if competing against China and the race for 21st-century leadership is a genuine policy priority.”
That said, none of this changes the fact that Trump raked in tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions from oil and gas donors by pledging to ramp up fossil fuel productions. This will further slow both the U.S. and global progress toward emissions reductions and reduce the incentives to switch to renewable sources of energy, a reality that clean energy advocates are well aware of. It’s possible that oil and gas promises, combined with Trump’s hostility to renewables, could easily overpower the argument that the U.S. needs to keep investing in clean energy to compete with China.
But they’re also looking for some kind of silver lining. Trump’s picks of North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin and Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright to lead the interior, environment and energy departments, respectively, are “workable” choices, an environmental attorney, a clean energy lobbyist and a current Democratic House member all told NOTUS.
Burgum and Zeldin are “competent,” Peters said to reporters before Wright was selected as energy secretary, adding that he expects to be able to work with them on some issues.
Burgum, who is currently the governor of North Dakota and has overseen aggressive investment in carbon capture, wind energy and fossil fuels simultaneously, will also lead Trump’s new National Energy Council, functioning as the point person in the administration for coordinating energy policy.
“[Chris Wright] comes from a business background. The energy czar, Doug Burgum, comes from a fossil fuel and wind state. He gets the ‘all of the above’ strategy,” Sullivan said. “So they’re going to be talking about it in a different way, but I do think that they’re going to continue to promote the Department of Energy’s scientific and technical capabilities.”
But the pitch will have to be perfect, Godfrey cautioned. Wright has argued extensively that “there is no energy transition” and that climate change is not a crisis. Liberty Energy argued that the IRA will “enfeeble” the American energy system in a January 2024 report. And Burgum has repeatedly advocated for increased fossil fuel production.
But Wright has also advocated at length that energy should be cheap and accessible. While he usually does so in order to argue in favor of increased gas production and against renewable sources, Godfrey and Peters are already using that same language to pitch the opposite: a continued energy transition. “We’re all going to have to build a ton of energy,” Peters said. “When you get blackouts and you get higher prices because you haven’t built enough, that’s going to be punished.”
The Department of Energy has already committed much of the grant money it has available for companies that want massive renewable energy support, and the remaining DOE authority, expertise and funds are available mostly for areas closer to Wright’s expertise — especially nuclear, according to Sullivan.
“American foreign policy can be really pro-energy and pro-climate, if we were really to deploy American nuclear around the world as a way for poor people to get electricity,” Peters said.
Finally, there’s Congress. Making substantive changes to energy policy will require congressional action because so much of the Biden administration’s successes on climate have stemmed from the Inflation Reduction Act, the infrastructure bill and the CHIPS and Sciences Act.
While Republicans have threatened to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, many in Congress, lobbyists and lawyers all believe that repeal attempts for each specific part of the law will be difficult since the tax incentives are broadly popular and have led to significant business investment in every part of the country.
“They will have to use words other than climate change,” said Sheila Olmstead, a former environmental economic adviser to Barack Obama. “There are things that people like, and they’re just getting called by a different name, but they will still be around.”
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Anna Kramer is a reporter at NOTUS.