Throughout his first weeks in office, President Donald Trump has issued a number of executive orders reversing federal efforts to combat the effects of climate change. Following these rollbacks, The Chronicle spoke with professors from the Nicholas School of the Environment and the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment and Sustainability to learn about the possible implications of these changes.
Similarly to when he entered office in 2017, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement. Other early actions included rolling back the Biden administration’s fuel economy standards to incentivize electric vehicle manufacturing, declaring a “national energy emergency” to encourage domestic fossil fuel development and halting offshore wind permitting and leasing.
“Everything has been done through executive order, which really is a signal of intent as opposed to regulatory changes,” said Tim Johnson, professor of the practice of energy and the environment, noting that changes to legislation must go through Congress. “… A lot of that money has been allocated, if not actually dispersed, so the Trump administration just can't flip a switch and turn that off.”
In comparison to Trump’s first administration, the president now has a Republican majority in both chambers of Congress and a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, meaning he is likely to face fewer obstacles to implementing his plans.
Despite this expected support from the other two branches of government, Lori Bennear, professor of energy economics and policy and Stanback dean of the Nicholas School, emphasized that Trump’s preference for executive orders represents a broader trend of relying on presidential powers to dictate environmental policy instead of passing new legislation.
“We've just seen that trend continue through all administrations — Democrat or Republican — in response to it being very challenging to get environmental things through Congress,” she said. “I don't want people to think that there's something particularly new about this … this trend towards executive orders has been happening for decades.”
In a shift from the Biden administration, Jackson Ewing, director of energy and climate policy at the Nicholas Institute, noted that Trump is seeking “to reposition U.S. energy policy to be more favorable to fossil fuels.”
Though, the professors noted that many of Trump’s recent orders in line with that goal — including withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and halting offshore wind lease sales — were not surprising. Still, Bennear noted that it remains unclear how the order on offshore wind lease sales will fare.
“There [are] several offshore wind farms that have signed leases off the coast of North Carolina, but now we're not going to be able to get permits to actually … install the wind farms,” she said. “It's not clear that the restriction will go away.”
Despite this, Bennear emphasized that while there may be less investment in offshore wind energy, renewable energy development will continue. She noted in particular that since offshore wind is “still one of the more expensive renewable options,” it is “not as devastating” as if there were limitations to building solar farms.
Even with these orders, the professors predict that market factors may limit the extent to which Trump’s orders increase fossil fuel development.
Currently, the U.S. is producing more oil and gas than any other country, with oil companies bringing in record profits under the Biden administration. According to Johnson, fossil fuel companies may have little desire to engage in expensive drilling operations, as a rise in production could flood the market and lower prices, thus leading to a decrease in corporate profits.
“I don't know if [fossil fuel companies] would take advantage of the ability to go out and ‘drill baby drill’ in the near term,” he said.
Another possible impediment to Trump’s executive orders is litigation, with all three professors expressing the high likelihood of a lawsuit over Trump’s order to withhold funds for climate projects approved by Congress in the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
Ewing noted that blocking congressionally appropriated funds “has traditionally been viewed as not in the legal purview of the president,” in reference to the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.
“I am quite certain they're doing this to get it to the Supreme Court very quickly … to test the limits of executive power,” Johnson agreed.
According to Bennear, to avoid a legal defeat over withholding funds, the Trump administration may try to repeal climate spending through Congress. However, she anticipates political opposition from Republicans, since a significant percentage of clean energy projects funded by the Inflation Reduction Act are located in GOP districts.
“Congresspeople like it when money flows into their district, whether they're red or blue or green or purple, and so I think that part of it … might be politically challenging to undo,” Bennear said.
Despite these rollbacks, Ewing noted that while the Trump administration could make it overall “more difficult” for Duke to reach its climate commitment targets, the University will not be completely deterred.
“I don't think that there is anything in these executive orders or anything in the realm of plausible action that the federal government could take that could prevent Duke from reaching its Climate Commitment and its decarbonization targets … because Duke has the autonomy [and] the mandate to ensure that those targets are met,” he said. “There are different pathways that we can go through to meet them, and that includes smart ways of offsetting the emissions that we can't abate … [and] progressively cleaning up our operations from a greenhouse gas emissions perspective.”
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Dylan Halper is a Trinity first-year and a staff reporter for the news department.