Trump Declares ‘Energy Emergency’ To Reverse Biden’s Assault On U.S. Power Production
President Donald Trump began the long road to reclaiming energy dominance with a series of executive orders designed to harness the nation’s natural resources after four years of environmental zealotry obstructed U.S. power production.
At least six out of dozens of executive actions delivered by the newly inaugurated president on Monday focused on energy or environmental issues, including an order titled “Unleashing American Energy” and a declaration of a “National Energy Emergency.” Trump previewed the emergency order in his afternoon inauguration speech from the Capitol Rotunda, where he characterized the record-level inflation Americans have suffered under the Biden years as a self-inflicted crisis.
“We will drill, baby, drill,” Trump said, remarking that the nation is host to “the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth.”
“And we are going to use it,” the president added. “We will bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again right to the top and export American energy all over the world.”
Trump vowed to make the United States a “rich nation again” through the use of “that liquid gold under our feet.”
The president’s declaration of an energy emergency instructs federal agencies to examine opportunities “to facilitate the identification, leasing, siting, production, transportation, refining, and generation of domestic energy resources, including, but not limited to, on Federal lands.”
Trump said the order was warranted to bring domestic power prices down and simultaneously deliver the administration a diplomatic weapon to deal with hostile foreign actors. “An affordable and reliable domestic supply of energy is a fundamental requirement for the national and economic security of any nation,” the order reads.
The order dedicated to “unleashing American energy” proclaims the “policy of the United States” will be “to encourage energy exploration and production on Federal lands and waters, including on the Outer Continental Shelf, in order to meet the needs of our citizens and solidify the United States as a global energy leader long into the future,” among other items. The order also eliminates President Joe Biden’s “electric vehicle (EV) mandate” and explicitly encourages the production of critical minerals. The previous administration had been sued by state attorneys general last year over the EV mandate, which benefited foreign minerals producers as the Biden Interior Department repeatedly shut down U.S. mines.
Trump signed an order focused on Alaska in particular, a state where 60 percent of the land is federally owned and one that’s suffered from meddling by Washington bureaucrats. The Biden administration canceled oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and stripped roughly 29 million additional acres from any opportunity for new drilling operations. The outgoing president added Alaska’s Bering Sea to the list of prohibited space for oil and gas exploration earlier this month with a unilateral ban on development across 625 million acres of U.S. coastline. And while oil and gas producers were shackled from development across the nation’s final frontier, mining and logging industries were similarly restrained from harvesting Alaska’s rich natural resources.
“If we were able to do what we wanted to do, we’d be one of the richest states by far,” Gov. Mike Dunleavy, R-Alaska, told The Federalist in August 2021.
Dunleavy celebrated Trump’s executive orders to leverage the state’s potential on X “as a true energy warehouse.”
When signing the executive order on Alaska Monday night, Trump was particularly concerned about re-opening ANWR’s 1.6-million-acre patch across the state’s north coast which had previously held lease sales at the end of his first term.
“What about ANWR?” Trump clarified with staff as he signed the order in the Oval Office. “We’re opening up ANWR.”
Trump also pulled back the Biden administration’s aggressive pursuit of offshore wind power with another executive order. The presidential directive temporarily withdrew leases for turbine farms across the Offshore Continental Shelf (OCS) pending further review.
Ocean turbine farms had been a centerpiece of the previous administration’s energy agenda, opening nearly the entire U.S. coastline to wind power developers in President Biden’s first year. Offshore wind companies, however, antagonized coastal residents, concerned fisheries, and harmed marine life in the process after onshore wind operations slaughtered hundreds of thousands of birds, including rare species that are federally protected. Low wind speeds in 2023, meanwhile, reduced generation for the first time in roughly 30 years despite increased capacity, a dip which highlighted the variability of wind-sourced power.
Trump’s energy agenda will primarily be executed by the president’s deputies running the Department of Energy and the Department of the Interior. Nominees to lead both departments expressed an eagerness in their confirmation hearings last week to unshackle the oil and gas industry from the onslaught of regulations from the Biden administration.
“Today, America produces energy cleaner, smarter, and safer than anywhere in the world,” said former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum. “When energy production is restricted in America, it doesn’t reduce demand. It just shifts productions to countries like Russia and Iran, whose autocratic leaders not only don’t care about the environment, but they use their revenues from energy sales to fund wars against us and our allies.”
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