How Trump can declare a national energy emergency

President-elect Donald Trump vowed to declare a national energy emergency as soon as he took office Monday, months after voters pledged to halve electricity and gasoline prices in his first year in office.

“I have declared this a national emergency so that we can rapidly reduce energy costs, dramatically increase energy production, generation and supply.” He told supporters at a rally. In Potterville, Michigan last August. “From day one, I approve new drilling, new pipelines, new refineries, new power plants, new reactors and cut red tape.”

The President-elect reiterated his intention as recently as December 22nd “Declare a national energy emergencyOn the first day of his administration, he promised to issue a series of executive orders to change the Biden administration’s policies on natural gas exports, drilling and emissions standards.

Trump plans to establish a National Energy Council headed by North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, his pick to lead the Interior Department. Burgum said at a hearing on the Senate nomination this week that he expects the House to be established by executive order.

It is unclear whether the emergency declaration will be largely symbolic or whether it will invoke broader powers beyond the executive orders Trump is expected to issue Monday. The president-elect’s transition team did not respond to a request for comment.

“My guess is that the energy emergency will be a rhetorical statement,” said Mike Sommers, president of the American Petroleum Institute, an oil industry lobby group. “When you put the executive orders together, they become the answer to what to do about the energy emergency.”

According to Glenn Schwartz, director of energy policy at the consulting firm Rapidan Energy, Trump has several energy-related emergency laws. Schwartz said emergencies are often loosely defined in federal law, giving the president broad discretion to use them as he sees fit.

And Trump may face little pushback from the courts for refusing to challenge presidential decisions related to national security, Schwartz said.

“What you end up with is that even if Trump expands his emergency powers to an unprecedented extent, it’s clear that the courts will step in to stop these actions,” the analyst said. No,” he said.

Maybe emergency officials

There is a clear precedent for Trump to introduce a power plant and to invoke emergency authority to expand the nation’s oil supply, Schwartz told clients in a research report published Thursday. Officials exercising the powers waive certain energy-related environmental and pollution laws.

Trump could also phase out gasoline fuels under the Clean Air Act to allow gasoline that violates federal air quality standards to enter the market, the analyst said. Presidents use such waivers whenever they want to stretch the nation’s oil supply and control prices, he said.

Trump might as well call it. Federal power law To order power plants to operate at maximum capacity and not comply with pollution limits, Schwartz said. The Secretary of Energy can invoke the act in times of war or when there is a sudden increase in demand or an emergency situation of electricity shortage.

The supply has rarely been used since World War II and is mostly reserved for situations where extreme weather overwhelms power plants, Schwartz said.

PJM Interconnection, the largest grid operator in the US, has warned of power shortages as coal plants retire faster than new capacity comes online. PJM operates all or part of the grid in 13 states in the Mid-Atlantic, Midwest and South.

The situation is likely to worsen as the technology sector builds power-hungry data centers to support artificial intelligence applications, with demand for electricity increasing dramatically.

The original Trump administration had considered invoking the act to order two years of power purchases from coal and nuclear power plants in 2018 if they were at risk of shutting down the service. His administration at the time abandoned the idea after facing pushback from the industry.

And Trump b Broad law It would allow the president to suspend pollution rules for industrial facilities, power plants, oil refineries, steel plants, chemical plants and other industrial facilities in emergency situations, Schwartz said.

According to Schwartz, there is little support under federal law for the president to force a new product. Trump may direct federal agencies to fast-track environmental reviews of energy projects he supports, such as pipelines, but the president cannot use emergency authorities to scrap environmental policies such as the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act, the analyst said.

Pending executive orders

Oil industry lobbyists at the American Petroleum Institute are expecting Trump to issue a series of energy-related orders as soon as Monday.

The administration is expected to order the Biden team to pause New export of natural gas facilities, Sommers said. President-elect President Biden will try to reverse his recent decision to ban 625 million acre-feet of federal water drilling. Trump’s authority to do so has been disputed and such an order could end up in court.

“We believe he has the ability to reverse that and we will defend it in court,” Somers said.

The industry wants the president to direct the Interior Department to increase the sale of oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico, Somers said. The Biden administration had released it. The smallest lease in history In the year According to the program until 2029.

These decisions are not expected to have an immediate impact on production. The United States has been the world’s largest producer of oil and gas for six years, surpassing Saudi Arabia and Russia. The CEOs of Exxon and Chevron have made it clear that production decisions are based on market conditions, not on reactions from the White House.

“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink,” Schwartz said.

Trump is expected to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement. Executive orders targeting tailpipe emissions and fuel economy standards for cars are also expected.

Still, only so much can be done with an executive order, Somers said, and the directives often require time-consuming rulemaking. The oil industry is more focused on pushing for lasting policy changes in the Republican-controlled Congress, he said.

“There’s not much you can do on day one, other than direct federal agencies to fulfill their promise to ensure the dominance of the force,” Somers said.