Trump to declare national energy emergency, unlocking new powers

President-elect Donald Trump is poised to invoke emergency powers as he orders a series of steps intended to unleash domestic energy production and undo Biden-era policies designed to fight climate change.

The national energy emergency declaration is among a host of changes Trump plans to or hours after he’s sworn in on Monday to deliver on campaign promises to boost domestic oil and gas output.

While many of the executive actions will simply kick off a lengthy regulatory process, they’re set to touch the full spectrum of the US energy industry, from oil fields to car dealerships. They also underscore Trump’s determination to reorient federal government policy behind oil and gas production, a sharp pivot from outgoing President Joe Biden’s efforts to curb fossil fuels.

An incoming White House official said Trump’s planned initiatives are aimed at cutting red tape and regulations that have restrained investment in natural-resource production critical to lowering costs for American consumers, since energy prices affect every single part of the economy. The changes also are key to bolstering national security and exerting US energy dominance around the world, said the official, who asked for anonymity to brief reporters on the directives before they were public.

Among the plans is an executive order specifically targeting natural resource production in Alaska, which is blessed with an abundance of oil, gas and critical minerals, the official said. The outgoing Biden administration imposed restrictions on energy development in the state, including on federal lands earmarked for oil production nearly a century ago.

Trump is poised to order the Interior Department to begin undoing some of the restrictions right away, including limits on activity within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a tract of land in the northwest corner of the state that’s the size of Indiana and home to an estimated 8.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil. The reserve - home to ConocoPhillips’ massive Willow oil project - also provides habitat for caribou, grizzly bears and migratory birds.

Trump’s planned national emergency declaration will be rooted in a rationale that high energy costs are unnecessary, resulting from policy decisions in Washington.

US electricity demand is expected to surge to unprecedented levels in coming years, fed by artificial intelligence, data centers and domestic manufacturing. Natural gas-fired power plants are expected to fulfill much of that coming demand, though technology companies have been negotiating deals to ensure electricity supplies from nuclear and renewable projects.

A national energy emergency declaration will unlock a host of authorities that will enable the US to produce core natural resources and quickly build again, the official said. It wasn’t immediately clear how an emergency energy declaration would be used, though a president can unlock special powers over the transportation of crude and use authorities to direct shifts in how electricity is generated and transmitted.

Trump nodded at the effort during a rally at the Capital One Arena in Washington on Sunday.

“We’re going to be using our emergency powers to allow countries and entrepreneurs and people with a lot of money build big plants, AI plants,” Trump said. “We need double the energy that we already have, and it’s going to end up being more than that.”

Declaring a national emergency allows a president to tap into as many as 150 special powers normally intended to address hurricanes, terrorist attacks and other unforeseen events, according to a report by the Brennan Center for Justice.

It’s not immediately clear, though, that Trump could use them successfully to achieve his goal of building more power plants. During Trump’s first term, he attempted to sustain operations of unprofitable coal and nuclear power plants by invoking emergency authority contained in the Federal Power Act that is typically reserved for natural disasters and other crises. The effort was eventually abandoned.

Trump’s planned declaration underscores the dramatic shift in energy and environmental policy in Washington. Environmentalists have for years been pressuring Biden to declare a similar climate emergency, but use the proclamation to halt oil exports and blunt domestic flows of crude instead.

Cold War Statute

A declaration would allow Trump to tap emergency authorities under a Cold-War era statute initially used by President Harry Truman to increase steel production during the Korean War. Biden invoked the same law, the Defense Production Act, to encourage US manufacturing of renewable energy technologies including solar panels, fuel cells and heat pumps he said were needed to combat climate change and increase domestic security. During Trump’s first term, he weighed using the same law to keep struggling coal plants running.

One possibility now is declaring a “grid security emergency” using authority contained in a 2015 transportation law, said Mark P. Nevitt, an associate professor at Emory University School of Law. “‘Emergency’ is not defined by Congress, so the president likely has broad authority to declare an ‘energy emergency’ in the first place,” he said in an email.

Trump is prepared to compel policy shifts that would enable new oil and gas development on federal lands, while directing a rollback of Biden-era climate regulations, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not be named because the efforts aren’t official.

Trump also is set to order his administration to roll back federal incentives for electric vehicles, while triggering a retreat from a set of stringent government regulations governing vehicle pollution and fuel economy that together form what he has called an “EV mandate.” Trump will put an end to the EV mandate as part of an “Unleashing American Energy” executive order, the incoming White House official said.

Trump’s executive order will also target government efficiency standards that limit consumer choices for products including dishwashers, gas stoves and shower heads, the official said. During his first term, Trump eased Energy Department water usage limits on shower heads after complaining low water flow was making it harder to properly wash his hair.

The president-elect’s wide-ranging energy plans are set to include efforts to halt Biden-era climate initiatives and spending. He has already committed to ordering another withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, the 2015 pact under which the US and nearly 200 other nations agreed to slash greenhouse gas emissions.

That diplomatic retreat would dovetail with domestic efforts to ease a suite of regulations limiting pollution from power plants and automobiles - mandates seen as critical for the US to meet its promise to halve greenhouse gas emissions at least 50% by the end of the decade. As the second-largest emitter of planet-warming pollution, the US has been viewed as an important contributor to the fight against climate change.

Trump is set to lift a moratorium on new US licenses to widely export liquefied natural gas, making good on a campaign pledge to rescind the pause implemented under Biden.

Other planned first-day actions include ordering a reversal of Biden’s decision to withdraw some 625 million acres of US waters from being available for oil and gas leasing. Biden’s declaration has already drawn a legal challenge from the American Petroleum Institute, Alaska and the Gulf states of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi, but the legality of Trump’s reversal will also likely be decided by federal courts. The last time Trump tried a similar move - reversing an Obama-era withdrawal from Arctic waters - it was rebuffed by an Alaska-based federal district court.

--With assistance from Stephanie Lai.