As part of his America First Energy Plan, this week, President Trump signed an Executive Order on Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth aimed at increasing domestic fossil-fuel production while attacking Obama-era climate actions. This broad executive order:

  • Directs federal agencies to to begin review discretionary actions (i.e, those not required by statute) that "potentially burden" domestic energy production, and to submit their draft findings within 120 days and finalized within 180 days. The OMB Director (Mick Mulvaney), in consultation with the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy (Ashley Hickey Marquis), will oversee this process.
  • Repeals climate- and energy-related presidential and regulatory actions issued by President Obama:
    • Executive Order 13653, Preparing the United States for the Impacts of Climate Change (2013)
    • Power Sector Carbon Pollution Standards (2013)
    • Mitigating Impacts on Natural Resources from Development and Encouraging Related Private Investment (2015)
    • Climate Change and National Security (2016)
    • Report, The President's Climate Action Plan (2013)
    • Report, Climate Action Plan Strategy to Reduce Methane Emissions (2014)
  • Rescinds the Council on Environmental Quality guidance instructing federal agencies to incorporate climate impacts into the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews of federal actions. The guidance was a way to standardize agency consideration of GHGs in the NEPA process, so removing it allows agencies to make their own decisions about implementation.
  • Directs the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to begin review the carbon pollution standards for new and existing power plants (i.e., the Clean Power Plan) and to revise or repeal the regulations. The executive order also directs EPA to review regulations on methane emissions from oil and gas wells.
  • Directs the U.S. Attorney General (Jeff Sessions) to notify the DC Circuit Court to hold the lawsuits against the Clean Power Plan pending the rulemaking process (which is expected to take years.)
  • Disbands the Interagency Working Group on Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases and rescinds several technical support documents on the social cost of carbon. Moreover, the executive order directs federal agencies to stop considering the $36/ton social cost of carbon in their policymaking and to instead return to using an older guidance that has a lower associated costs. This potentially allows agencies to review rules that rely on the social cost of carbon in their regulatory impact analyses.
  • Directs the Secretary of Interior (Ryan Zinke) to revise or withdraw the 2016 Secretary's Order on modernizing the federal coal program, and to lift the moratorium on federal coal leasing that has been in effect since 2015. The executive order also directs the Secretary of Interior to review and (possibly) rescind:
    • Oil and Gas; Hydraulic Fracturing on Federal and Indian Lands (2015)
    • General Provisions and Non-Federal Oil and Gas Rights (2016)
    • Management of Non Federal Oil and Gas Rights (2016)
    • Waste Prevention, Production Subject to Royalties, and Resource Conservation (2016)

The executive order broadly attacks climate actions undertaken during the Obama administration and blindly supports fossil-fuel production. For example, while withdrawing the order on modernizing the federal coal program benefits coal companies — since they can purchase coal for almost nothing — the American public loses out from reduced royalties and actions that are counter to reducing the growing threat of climate change. The focus of the order is on domestic energy production, not specifically climate change. It calls for using the "best available peer-reviewed science and economics" and admits that renewable energy is a domestic energy resource. The order seems to ignore the fact that domestic fossil fuel energy sources often compete against each other (e.g., natural gas vs. coal), not against renewable energy, and that many of the forces driving these changes are market-based, not regulation-based.

Importantly though, many of the regulations that are attacked in this executive order took years to create under the regulatory process. Likewise, dismantling these regulations will take years since they will have to follow the same regulatory process, which includes a public comment period. In this process, agencies have to justify their decision for rescinding a rule. However, the process may take longer than expected given that the Trump administration does not have the necessary (political) staff in agencies to implement this order. Political staff generally make major policy decisions for an agency, as would be needed in this case. Agencies may also be hamstrung by President Trump's executive order requiring them to eliminate two regulations for every new regulation, all of which could further delay this process.

What You Can Do

Call Your Representative and Senators. The public needs to fully engage in the regulatory process to voice strong opposition against steps from this administration to roll back climate action. We must also broadly demand more from our representatives to not only protect our air and water, but also our overall environment. By delaying and opposing this executive order, we demonstrate how out of step and backward the administration's view of the environment is, and we build towards a future where this order will be overturned and environmental protections will be strengthened.

- Energy & Environment Policy Working Group, RISE Stronger

Have comments or something to add? Contact the RISE Energy & Environment Policy Working Group at [email protected]