President-elect Trump’s win represents a major victory for fossil-fuel energy companies, especially coal producers.
President-elect Trump’s win represents a major victory for fossil-fuel energy companies, especially coal producers.
Trump has vowed to roll back regulations on the industry and withdraw from the Paris Agreement, which calls for sharply reducing emissions from the nation’s coal-burning power plants. He has also vowed to overturn President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone Pipeline and undo restrictions on oil production on public lands.
Paris Agreement
Trump’s win jeopardizes one of President Obama’s top diplomatic achievements. Under the Paris Agreement, the Obama administration pledged to cut U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions up to 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025. The U.S. pledge was widely seen as critical to securing the participation of the world’s other leading emitters, especially China. While President-elect Trump doesn’t have the power to unilaterally “cancel” the Paris Agreement, as he has pledged, his administration could refuse to attend summit meetings or to enforce Mr. Obama’s emissions-reduction plan, potentially giving other nations cause to rethink their own pledges.
The Environmental Protection Agency
Mr. Trump has pledged to “get rid of [the EPA] in almost every form. We're going to have little tidbits left but we're going to take a tremendous amount out.” Though ambitious, this is improbably. His choice for administrator of the agency will signal how much restructuring and enforcement is likely to occur at the department.
U.S. waterways
Trump said has he would rescind new EPA rules that clarify which waterways the EPA can protect from development under the Clean Water Act.
Oil and gas production
Trump has said he would lift any ban on oil and gas production on federal lands.
Keystone Pipeline
Trump has said would approve the Keystone Pipeline, but also that he wants “a piece of the profits.”
OPEC
Trump has said of OPEC that the U.S. “will become and stay independent of any need to import energy from the OPEC cartel," adding, "We don't deal with them. We'll handle them just fine."
Alternative energy
Trump has sharply criticized the wind industry’s impact on wildlife, alleging that windmills kill eagles and other birds. Although he has promised to continue a federal mandate that requires oil refiners to blend ethanol into gasoline, he has been skeptical of federal subsidies for other forms of alternative energy.