Free Our Energy Sector From Crippling Regulations and Inflationary Spending on So-Called “Green Energy”

By John R. Hays, Jr.

President Donald Trump now has a second opportunity to free the U.S. energy industry from unnecessary and expensive regulations, including oppressive, senseless caps that jeopardize our energy independence and give advantage to foreign markets.  

Change is much needed, especially since Joe Biden has overturned three-quarters of Trump’s deregulatory actions that prioritized American energy independence and natural resources. Biden walked back President Trump’s sanctioning of the Keystone XL Pipeline, imposed burdensome regulations on the emissions of naturally occurring gases like methane, and circumvented the legislative process by mandating federal agencies to create wide-sweeping proposals on obtaining carbon neutrality. 

Additionally, the Biden administration’s disastrous misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” has raised energy prices, skyrocketed inflation, and has failed to provide the clean energy advancement it promised. 

With Congress now on his side, President Trump can spearhead the adoption of much-needed energy reforms that have been blocked or overturned and can encourage policies that reduce costs, cultivate energy independence and stability, and put America’s interests and wellbeing first. 

In his first term, President Trump made great strides with environmental and energy sector deregulation, such as suspending participation in the Paris Climate Agreement, replacing the Clean Power Plan with the Affordable Clean Energy Rule, and lifting natural gas and oil extraction bans. But because the majority of these reforms were temporary fixes in the form of executive orders, it is crucial that President Trump’s second term policies create sustainable, long-term change that is written into law by Congress. 

As a whole, President Trump’s energy and environmental philosophy must remain anchored in free enterprise, economic stability, and independence from foreign adversaries. There are several steps he can take and encourage Congress to adopt to revive the stability and excellence of American energy. 

First, he should focus on eliminating harmful subsidies that distort energy markets and effectively nearly double the capital cost of electric generation. Wind energy subsidies are one example of these extraneous expenses that are made in the name of climate justice.  Instead, they disincentivize innovation, reduce competition, and raise prices for consumers.  

Second, the new administration should take a deregulatory scalpel to the countless unnecessary environmental and energy regulations that choke out competition, discourage energy development, and are not otherwise justified, such as regulations on emissions from naturally occurring gases like methane.  

Next, President Trump should encourage Congress to unleash our natural resources for greater innovation and economic growth. This can be done by discouraging restrictions on natural gas usage for appliances, promoting exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), facilitating construction of new pipelines and use of existing ones, and streamlining the leasing of federal lands for oil and gas development, such as Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The latter is especially important in light of Biden’s recent action to prevent drilling on over 625 million acres of offshore lands, something President Trump should take every action to reverse.  

To accomplish these objectives, the permitting process for energy projects must be reformed and streamlined to remove unjustified permits and solve the inefficiencies and years-long processing delays that stifle energy development and growth. Processing energy project permits in a timely and efficient manner will grow American jobs, fast-track energy independence, and ignite innovation of cleaner, alternative sources of energy such as nuclear generation. 

In the end, America’s domestic energy policies can only do so much for the environment and lessening the effects of any anthropomorphic climate change, since America contributes only a small fraction of overall so-called “greenhouse gases.”  Moreover, human activity is not the sole determiner of climate changes, and much change is caused by environmental phenomena outside human control – such as sunspots, volcanic activity, variations in Earth’s orbit, and changing CO2 levels. It is crucial that the incoming administration have a clear, well-rounded energy agenda that stabilizes the economy and slashes burdensome, politically correct regulations while still exploring cleaner and more efficient sources of sustainable energy. The two are not mutually exclusive. Now is the perfect time for the incoming administration to prioritize their fusion.  

Ultimately, the new energy and environmental policy platform must protect taxpayers from gratuitous spending in the name of “clean energy” — the Inflation Reduction Act’s $1 trillion fiscal cost being a prime example. It must include them in important climate and energy policy discussions and proposals, and it must prevent the energy shortages and inflation that are inevitable under today’s progressive regulations and caps. 

Environmental and energy agency employees must be transparent with and accountable to the American people about the costs of policies and regulations made in the name of preventing global warming. Sweeping climate and energy policy discussions should occur in the public sphere, not behind the closed doors of the EPA and the DOE.  

America’s energy and environmental policies are no longer simply a debate over whether anthropomorphic climate change exists and whether fossil fuels are responsible for global warming – it has evolved into an economic and national security issue that affects every American. The country needs energy independence to not only succeed, but to survive. Threats of foreign aggression loom on every front. Depending on our adversaries for critical energy supplies is reckless and irresponsible. 

Thankfully, conservatives finally have another chance to restore reliability, abundance, and affordability in the energy sector by unleashing our natural resources and removing anti-growth regulations.  

At long last, the new administration can combat the Biden-Harris progressive climate agenda that did nothing but waste American energy potential and burden hardworking Americans, all in the name of “saving the planet.” Such virtue-signaling policies are neither economically nor scientifically sound, and the next four years provide the perfect opportunity to overturn them and unleash the economic growth, innovation, and energy stability that America’s abundant natural resources make possible. 

John R. Hays, Jr., is a longtime energy lawyer based in Austin, Texas.  He served as an adjunct professor of energy law and policy at the University of Texas School of Law from 2008 through 2023. 

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.