Energy was not the top concern on voters’ minds when they overwhelmingly reelected President-elect Donald Trump earlier this month. Still, millions of people see gas prices every day as they drive to work. The price of everything we buy is rising because of the cost of the fuel needed to transport it to us.
Trump is in a position to improve the lives of every citizen by making energy cheaper, more reliable, and more abundant. Some of what he can accomplish can be done immediately, but others will take time, and his most enduring energy legacy items will require cooperation with Congress.
Trump can quickly reverse much of President Joe Biden’s decision to limit energy exploration and development on public lands. In addition to banning most oil and gas development in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, Biden canceled offshore leases in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. ANWR can be opened for energy exploration by executive action, and the offshore leases can unilaterally move forward.
Biden also imposed higher costs on oil and gas production on public lands with new fees and restrictions. These can be undone, as can Biden’s ozone rules that capped oil and natural gas production in most of the Southwest.
Biden’s stringent new power plant rules, which would force many coal and natural gas plants to shut down before their generating capacity can be replaced by renewable sources, can be rescinded. Pipeline permits, such as a natural gas pipeline, could get the green light to connect Marcellus Shale production with markets in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia.
Most importantly, Trump could undo Biden’s electric vehicle mandate, which abused the authority of the Clean Air Act to mandate that most cars and trucks sold in the United States by 2035 be electric. These mandates were so unrealistic that Biden was forced to delay their implementation. Trump should go back and rescind them entirely.
Unfortunately, for everything that Trump does through executive power, a future Democratic president could also undo. That is why Trump should immediately begin working with Congress on comprehensive energy legislation that would ensure affordable and reliable energy for consumers, businesses, and manufacturers for generations to come.
On the top of Trump’s legislative energy agenda should be permitting reform. There is already strong bipartisan consensus that the federal permitting system is broken, most spectacularly the National Environmental Policy Act, which empowers activists to delay any energy or infrastructure project by suing in federal court. So far, Congress has exempted certain types of projects from NEPA. However, these exemptions are just an admission that NEPA is a policy failure in need of complete reform. Not only will NEPA reform make energy development easier, but it will also make investments in power grid infrastructure and reliability more cost-effective.
In addition to rewriting NEPA, the Trump administration should go back and make clear that the Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency the power only to limit pollutants from gas-powered vehicles, not to pass regulations so stringent that the effect is to ban the sale of new gas cars entirely. The same thing must be done for power plants.
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Thanks to the demand for electricity driven by artificial intelligence projects, technology companies are investing heavily in a nuclear renaissance. Trump can embrace nuclear power by removing regulatory barriers to the private storage, handling, and recycling of nuclear fuel.
Under Biden’s misguided energy policies, gas prices rose 43% and electricity by 30%. The spikes in California, where the Democratic Party has complete control of government, are far worse. As a result, people and manufacturing businesses cannot escape the state fast enough. Trump has the opportunity to make sure the rest of the nation doesn’t share California’s fate. If we are going to have the economic and military strength to challenge Chinese power, we need affordable and reliable energy. Trump can make that happen.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
