January 21, 2025
4 min read
Trump Declares Energy ‘Emergency’ to Justify More Oil and Gas Drilling
Though largely symbolic, President Trump’s declaration of an “energy emergency” could throw a wrench in renewable energy development and will cut into the Endangered Species Act
U.S. President Donald Trump signs executive orders during the inaugural parade inside Capital One Arena, in Washington, D.C., on January 20, 2025.
Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images
CLIMATEWIRE | Minutes into his second term, President Donald Trump declared a “national energy emergency” and said he would bring forth a “golden age” of domestic affordability and global dominance.
Though largely symbolic, the move was an especially bitter pill for climate advocates.
Not only do they dispute the need for an energy emergency — as U.S. oil and gas production has thrived the past several years — but Trump’s Day 1 decision comes after activists failed for four years to convince former President Joe Biden to declare a similar emergency for climate change.
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Collin Rees, U.S. program manager for the activist group Oil Change International, said Trump’s quick turnaround shows he understands the political potency of an emergency declaration.
His group had long pressured the Biden administration to do the same with climate. Now, Rees said, advocates are left wondering why Biden never took that step — even if only to show his supporters that he took seriously the threat of unmitigated global warming.
“It would have shown that he was willing to fight and actually mobilize all the resources in the government,” Rees said.
During his time in office, Biden made climate action a priority for the federal government and helped pass one of the biggest climate laws in U.S. history. But his team resisted calls to declare an emergency, even as climate-juiced heat waves, droughts, floods, hurricanes and wildfires killed thousands of Americans.
Some environmental groups and Democratic lawmakers wanted Biden to go further than the climate policies he did enact. They hoped Biden would use a climate emergency to end crude oil exports, stop offshore oil drilling, cut U.S. investment into international fossil fuel projects, grow domestic clean energy manufacturing and rebuild renewable energy systems in communities hit by climate change.
For his part, Trump did not even wait until the end of his almost 3,000-word inaugural speech to declare an energy emergency.
“We will bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again right to the top, and export American energy all over the world,” Trump said in his speech from the Capitol Rotunda.
The energy emergency guts the Endangered Species Act and states without evidence that Biden’s climate policies have imperiled the nation and led to a “precariously inadequate and intermittent energy supply, and an increasingly unreliable grid.” The emergency creates a definition of energy that does not include wind and solar and claims the head of key federal agencies should use their authority to “facilitate the identification, leasing, siting, production, transportation, refining, and generation of domestic energy resources,” particularly on the West and East coasts where Democratic governors and state lawmakers have blocked some fossil fuel infrastructure. It faces a significant court battle in the coming months and years.
Whatever the language, Trump won’t be able to fully realize his energy policy with the stroke of a pen, said Michael Gerrard, faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.
Much of that will be decided in the coming years — after pitched battles in the courts and Congress.
“Declaring an emergency gives very few additional powers,” Gerrard said. “It’s not as if it allows him to supersede federal or state law as a general matter. There are certain specific things that could be done, but on the energy front, they’re extremely limited.”
That could include banning the import or export of certain types of energy, or using the defense production act to build energy equipment. Still, Gerrard said the energy emergency declaration ultimately was “more performative than substantive.”
As part of his rationale for the emergency declaration, Trump said Monday that the United States was in an energy crisis. But Trump on Day 1 also took steps to sideline clean energy — even though the sector expanded significantly during Biden’s presidency, and experts say it still has potential to boost U.S. energy independence.
The Department of Energy has estimated that the country has enough renewable energy potential to meet 100 times the annual U.S. energy demand.
Trump, however, has taken a dim view of cleaner forms of energy — especially wind. His office sent a notice Monday to reporters that said Trump would move to halt both onshore and offshore wind development.
The move likely will slow — but not stop — the U.S. expansion of clean energy. But Rees of Oil Change International said the avalanche of Trump energy moves shows that American conservatives right now have the upper hand in getting their message to voters.
“I think it’s an indicator of how the right is doing better at politics right now,” Rees said. “Trump understands the intersection of politics and energy better.”
Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.
