The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Declared A "National Energy Emergency." Now What?

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

During his inaugural address, President Trump said, "I will also declare a national energy emergency — we will drill, baby, drill." What does that declaration mean — not only for the energy industry, but for combatting climate change & for consumers?This episode: political correspondent Sarah McCammon, climate correspondent Jeff Brady, and business correspondent Camila Domonoske.The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs & Kelli Wessinger, and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Dugan in Tallahassee, Florida. I'm currently admiring the beautiful snowman I just built outside of my home. This podcast was recorded at 1 07 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday, January 23rd, 2025. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll still be enjoying the beautiful Florida snow. Enjoy the show. It's so wild, but at least if it's cold, you can build a snowman. It's fun. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McKammon. I cover politics.

Today on the show, we look at President Trump's executive actions related to climate and energy. And to talk about it, I'm joined by two terrific colleagues, NPR climate correspondent Jeff Brady and NPR's Kamila Domenosky, who covers energy and the automotive industry. Thanks to you both for being here. Hey, Sarah. Happy to be here. So in his inaugural speech earlier this week, President Trump said he wanted to ramp up domestic energy production. That is why today I will also declare a national

energy emergency. We will drill baby drill. All right Camila we've heard drill baby drill before but national energy emergency what exactly does Trump mean when he says that? Well what he did was he formally declared an emergency and claimed basically extra powers for his office as a result. And exactly how that plays out, we're going to have to watch and see what he does with it. But one thing that was really interesting about this declaration is no president has claimed these specific emergency powers as an energy emergency like this ever

before. But the country did have an energy crisis in the 70s where there were shortages of energy, right? People were waiting in lines for gasoline. There wasn't enough natural gas. And that is absolutely not the case today, right? America has energy today, but what the administration has said, the justification for claiming these emergency powers

is partly looking forward, saying that there is a potential future problem because energy demand is going to grow thanks to AI and manufacturing, we're gonna need more electricity, so we have to do something about that, which is a sort of different framework for it's not how most people think of emergency, right?

The other thing that you hear, you see it in the executive order from the president on this and you hear it from some people who support this emergency declaration, they'll actually characterize the emergency in question here as being former President Biden's policies, that government policies that are intended to bring down emissions to fight climate change, that that is the cause of what they're characterizing as an emergency here. Camila, when you say the office is claiming certain powers, what does that mean? And what might they be able to do with those powers? We're really going to have to watch and see. I mean, really this order

directs the agencies to look at what emergency powers they have. Things that specifically got mentioned in the order include the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act, these laws that have environmental protocols, things before you can start an energy project. You have to check to make sure that it won't hurt the water, that it won't harm endangered species. And there might be ways to speed that up, make it easier for industry by claiming emergency authorities. There's also references to eminent domain, whether there could be the use of the Defense Production Act to accelerate energy projects.

Beyond that, there's some other powers that aren't specifically named in the order, but which are unlocked by declaring an emergency. For instance, the Clean Air Act has some emergency provisions. So we'll have to see which of those wind up being used in material ways. SONIA DARAGOS You know, Jeff, correct me if I'm wrong. President Trump talks about exporting American energy all over the world, but isn't the US already the biggest producer of oil and gas? It is. The US produces more crude oil than any country ever, and the same with natural gas. And that's surprising to a lot of people. It happened during the Biden administration, you know, which also had

the most ambitious climate change agenda of any president. So in some ways, the energy dominance that President Trump wants the country to have is already here. And I think one big benefit that the Trump administration and the oil and gas industry that generally supports him, one benefit they see is that exporting oil and natural gas to other countries is a big benefit. That brings in more money to the US, reduces trade deficits, and also more power, you know, because energy is so essential to economies. And a country that controls that can control other nations.

And what about this apparent goal of increasing production? Absolutely. The stated objective of the Trump administration here is more production of energy and specifically of fossil fuels. Liquid gold is the way that President Trump likes to talk about this. One challenge is the US, again, already producing an enormous amount of these resources, and the companies that make oil and gas, they don't actually want to make too much oil and gas. They're under pressure from their investors not to trigger a classic boom bust cycle like

the industry has gone through so many times. They're keeping what's called restrained production. They're not going crazy, drill baby drill, and they don't particularly want to for their own self-interest. So the Trump administration can absolutely roll back regulations, do things to make drilling cheaper and easier for companies, but it's really going to depend on markets and investors and their bottom line, whether they respond by increasing production or just by taking bigger profits. Jeff, I mean, this directive, this action really focuses on older types of energy, doesn't it?

this action really focuses on older types of energy, doesn't it? Mm. Yeah. You look at how energy is defined in this declaration, and it doesn't include wind and solar, renewable forms of energy. They're more than 14% of the country's electricity generation now. Of course, they were a focus for the Biden administration's climate policies because they don't release those greenhouse gases that are contributing to human-caused climate change. I think some of the hostility here to renewable energy, to wind and solar that we're hearing from President Trump, and of course, it comes also from the oil industry that has long been

aligned with Republicans, but I think it also fits with Trump's view of what a great America looks like. You know, in the business world, oil has dominated the economy for so long. And when you look at renewable energy, other countries have more of an opportunity to compete against the U.S. with that. You can develop renewable energy wherever you are, because the wind and the sun is everywhere. But he wants to stick with oil and gas, because that's what's under our feet here in the United States. And he's also, I guess, rolling back moves toward electric cars. I mean, let's talk about some of these regulations that have been rescinded by President Trump.

Under Biden, there was a goal to make half of new cars sold in this country electric by 2030. So just five years from now, Trump rolled that back. Camila, what does that mean for consumers who might be thinking about buying a new car right now? Right now, like this actual moment, it doesn't mean much. What President Trump has rolled back is the aspirational goal that former President Biden set in an executive order. So that was sort of easy to set, easy to roll back. There are other things the Biden administration did that were more difficult to set up in the first place and will take more time to roll back. And this includes things like the emissions standards, the rules requiring cars to get more efficient, and the tax credits not just for buying a vehicle, things are still in place. We know, it's very clear from these orders and the entire campaign trail, that the administration does plan to come for those things. So that in the years ahead, over time, you would expect to have fewer electric vehicles than there would have been under the Biden era policies.

Not zero, right? The auto industry has invested enormous amounts of money in this transition to electric vehicles. They're looking at competition globally from China and the need to make electric vehicles to compete. They'll say that consumers actually really like electric vehicles when they drive them. They wanna meet that market.

So it's not a complete cessation, but a slowdown is really what we're looking at here. Okay. We're going to take a quick break. We'll have more in just a moment. And we're back. You know, I want to talk about the optics of all of this. Even with these executive actions, existing wind infrastructure isn't going to be dismantled. Solar panels aren't going to be taken down. The messaging is similar to what we saw from the first Trump administration.

And the industry, I mean, they still responded accordingly. Jeff, can you just remind us what happened last time? Yeah, I'm just thinking about this week. And there have been so many executive orders, it can be tempting to just kind of think that everything about reducing climate pollution has changed this week. But our energy system is so

big and complicated, and it doesn't just change because the president wants it to. I can remember back during Trump's first term, I think it was 2019, you know, he had vowed to help the coal industry, which was in decline, still in decline. He was out there actually trying to save individual coal power plants. There was one with the Tennessee Valley Authority, so even with a federal organization, and he failed to save that one power plant. This time they're a little bit more organized. The coal industry seems a bit encouraged, especially with the future of increasing electricity

demand with all the data centers being built. But this transition away from coal-fired power plants is still happening. No one is building new plants. And that's because power plant owners can make more money building natural gas power plants that emit less of the climate pollution or even renewable energy projects. And those are often going up in red states. Wind is huge in Texas. I remember when I was in Iowa, it was huge in Iowa. I mean, there are big swaths of the country where this is already very ingrained and has

been for many years. Yeah, absolutely. And I'll just add on that point with electric vehicles too, we're seeing this is a more nascent industry, but battery plant investment, where electric vehicle manufacturing plants are coming up. It's called the battery belt in the South, right? There are a lot of red states that have multi-billion dollar investments coming their way, which, you know, it's gonna create a real political fight for some of these things that we know President Trump wants to do,

but he'll need help from Congress to do, like rolling back some of those tax incentives for electric vehicles. There was a hearing in House Ways and Means just this week where there was a parade of Republican lawmakers saying, we want to use a scalpel, not a sledgehammer on taking away these tax incentives. And of course, they all have something different they want to keep inside that scalpel, right? So there's going to be big debates in Congress over a lot of these things, in part because of how distributed these industries are across red states, the variety of parts of the country that see benefits from them.

Now, another action the president took this week, the administration once again withdrew from the Paris climate accords. That of course is an international agreement designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The US was party to them during the Biden administration, so there's been a lot of back and forth here. Is there any real incentive at this point for industries to stop abiding by this framework? I mean, how much certainty do they have about how to move forward?

I mean, there is, I would say, tremendous uncertainty. And this sense of whiplash that companies experience when the federal policy on this does a complete 180 every four years, very frustrating for folks. And I think especially in the world of energy, a lot of these projects are on really long timelines. You're looking at things that will be around for decades. So it's a complicated question.

And I will say, I think there are a lot of people in a lot of companies who are reckoning right now, doing a lot of scenario planning, trying to figure out, okay, if this and that, how to navigate a system where the world is heading in one direction and the US is really pulling around back and forth as administrations change. Yeah, and this was a real Biden administration strategy here to make sure that these policies endure because President Biden used to say often when I think of climate, I think of jobs. It isn't just about trying to clean up pollution and addressing climate change. This is about creating a whole new kind of economy because they wanted the United States to dominate these emerging clean energy technologies,

just make sure the U.S. was leading the way there in development of manufacturing. And a lot of companies signed on to that. And it's really hard for those companies to change their business plans that quickly, just from one administration to the next. There is this interesting overlap between the administrations. You know, Jeff just said that the Biden policy was to dominate in clean energy, that Trump policy is energy dominance, thinking of fossil fuels. But both administrations have really focused on a made in America, domestic manufacturing and industrial base.

You know, with very different justifications, whether they're thinking about climate or just thinking about competing with China, certainly there are a lot of companies that are optimistic that they'll be able to have a through line where those same investments that made sense under Biden policies will still make sense, will still pencil out under Trump even if they're not getting support from the federal government for climate reasons. I mean, what does all of this mean? Big picture for efforts to combat climate change. Is that just sort of off the table for the foreseeable future? You know, I think there's a lot of momentum in the direction of climate friendly sources

of energy. The Biden administration passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which has a lot more to do with climate change, dedicated hundreds of billions of dollars in incentives to get people and companies and states and local governments to switch to cleaner forms of energy. And a lot of that money is out the door. And it's going to be hard for the Trump administration to claw some of it back. I know they're going to try. There's going to be lawsuits. It's going to be a big deal. But overall, the fact that

President Trump is so focused on fossil fuels, it's going to slow down the transition that's underway. But it seems hard to believe that it could actually reverse it, which is, I think, what he wants to do. All right, Jeff and Camila, thanks so much for bringing your reporting to the podcast today. Thank you. Thanks for having us. I'm Sarah McCammon, I cover politics, and thank you for listening to the NPR Politics

Podcast.