Donald Trump declared a national energy emergency on the first day of his new presidency, as part of a barrage of pro-fossil fuel actions and efforts to “unleash” already booming US energy production that included also rolling back restrictions in drilling in Alaska and undoing a pause on gas exports.
The emergency declaration, which made good on a campaign-trail promise but could be open to legal challenge, would allow his administration to fast-track permits for new fossil fuel infrastructure.
It comes amid stated concerns about the power grid struggling to handle a projected surge in demand from data centers. “[The declaration] … means you can do whatever you have to do to get out of that problem and we do have that kind of emergency,” he said as he signed the order at the White House late on Monday.
Earlier, Trump laid out his pro-fossil fuel agenda just after being sworn into office on Monday. “We have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have, the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we are going to use it – let me use it,” Trump said in his inaugural address. “We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it.”
Trump also signed an order aimed at “unleashing American energy” on Monday night, and he overturned auto-emissions standards and rolled back restrictions on oil and gas expansion in Alaska. He additionally lifted a January 2024 Biden administration pause on approvals for applications to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities, despite the White House last month releasing an analysis showing any further expansion of exports would drive up costs for domestic consumers and hamper climate efforts.
In another executive action, Trump suspended offshore wind leasing from all areas of the outer continental shelf pending an environmental and economic review. Trump has frequently criticized offshore wind during his campaign appearances and had promised to target projects if elected.
The White House also announced as one of “Trump’s America First priorities” that he would repeat his first term action of pulling the US out of the Paris climate agreement.
The energy emergency declaration will “unlock a variety of different authorities” aimed at enabling the country to produce more natural resources, create jobs, and boost national security, a Trump official told reporters on Monday morning.
However, the world’s top climate experts have long warned that additional extraction of coal, oil, or gas could imperil the ability to meet the United Nations’ climate goals, and will put the world closer to climate catastrophe. The Biden administration oversaw record levels of US fossil fuel production, despite its prioritization of climate policy.
“Trump’s declaration of a national energy emergency leverages a false premise to encourage expanded fossil fuel production at a time when the United States is already the top oil and gas producer in the world,” Wenonah Hauter, executive director of climate nonprofit Food and Water Watch, said in a statement.
“As fires still rage across Los Angeles and communities impacted by hurricanes and floods still struggle to recover, we must rapidly reduce our dangerous fossil fuel production and dependence – not increase it.”
On Monday’s press call the Trump adviser said that “high costs of energy are unnecessary.”
“They are by design. It is a cause of policy,” the adviser said. “We can address that, but it has been punitive to the American people over the past four years and something that we immediately need to rectify for our nation’s prosperity.”
But Hauter said Trump’s moves could actually increase expenses for ordinary Americans. “His actions will only increase expenses for everyone, through higher utility bills, greater pollution impacts, and the overwhelming costs of climate change-supercharged disasters – all falling disproportionately on low-income families and communities of color,” she said.
The oil and gas industry donated more than $75m to Trump’s campaign. The energy giant Chevron, as well as funders of oil and gas expansion like Citibank, also donated to Trump’s inauguration fund.
“Trump’s day-one orders reveal everything we need to know about where his administration’s loyalties lie,” said John Noel, deputy climate program director for the environmental nonprofit Greenpeace US. “They reflect the priorities of his major donors, not the American public.”
The energy emergency declaration may be vulnerable to legal challenges if the Trump administration cannot firmly establish the existence of an actual emergency to justify the ability to circumvent environmental and other regulatory and permitting procedures.
In his speech after being sworn in, Trump also promised to fill up the country’s strategic fossil fuel reserves and export American energy “all over the world”. He is expected to signa record number of executive orders on Monday.
Another Monday order signed by Trump focuses on “unleashing” oil and gas from Alaska, including the 19m-acre Arctic national wildlife refuge (ANWR). The region is one of the last intact ecosystems in the US, home to some of the region’s last remaining polar bears and an array of other wildlife.
The president’s move makes good on a promise he made to swiftly reopen the ANWR to drilling if elected in an August conversation with Elon Musk.
Hours earlier, Trump also overturned a swath of Biden-era rules, including two restricting fossil fuel development in Alaska. He slashed a 2023 plan to limit drilling in nearly 3 million acres of the Arctic Ocean in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, which Biden announced when he approved the controversial and highly polluting Willow oil development project.
And he rescinded a Biden move from earlier this month which withdrew swaths of the US coasts from future oil and gas drilling, including in and around Alaska’s Bering Sea.
Trump officials in 2020 finalized a plan to open up part of the ANWR to fossil fuel development, overturning 60 years of protections for the nation’s largest remaining expanse of unspoiled wilderness. The Biden administration in recent years has attempted to bring protections back to the area.
Last week, Biden’s White House moved to place more of the refuge off limits to oil and gas development, in a last-minute effort to complicate Trump’s plans. Days earlier, Alaska sued the Biden administration for its attempts to prevent drilling in the region.
Additional Monday orders are expected to undo Biden-era auto emissions standards – which Trump misleadingly calls an “electric vehicle mandate”– and end efforts to boost the efficiency and sustainability of household goods such as shower heads, stoves, and dishwashers.
As they horrified climate activists, Trump’s Monday executive orders won support from the American Gas Association, a fossil fuel lobby organization. “We applaud President Trump’s decisive action to maximize the benefits from our nation’s abundant and essential energy and to protect consumer choice for each and every American,” said the group’s president in a statement Karen Harbert.
Read more of the Guardian’s Trump coverage
