President Trump wants to redirect the federal government away from former President Joe Biden's climate agenda and toward an even deeper embrace of fossil fuels.
"We will drill, baby, drill," Trump said to cheers from supporters at his inauguration speech on Jan. 20.
His burst of climate and energy executive orders was quickly heaped with praise by fossil fuel industry groups and their supporters, who see a brighter future under Trump for oil and gas, coal and plastics.
Repeating a policy from his first term, Trump started the yearlong process to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, in which countries agreed to limit climate pollution and avoid the worst effects of global warming. Trump also declared a national energy emergency and temporarily stopped new wind energy projects on federal land and in federal waters.
With the flurry of activity, it may be tempting to think that much of the U.S. climate and energy landscape has changed since Jan. 20. But it really hasn't. That's because human-caused climate change and the United States' energy system are massive, complicated systems that don't change quickly, even if a president wants them to.
Energy and climate policy is "like an aircraft carrier"
Biden left office having put in place the most ambitious climate agenda of any previous president. In 2022, with help from Democratic lawmakers, he signed the Inflation Reduction Act. The law directs hundreds of billions of dollars to boost renewable energy, electric cars and cleaner manufacturing. His administration also drafted sweeping new rules to clean up pollution from cars and power plants.
He described the package as "the most significant action ever on climate in the history of the world." None of that can be easily undone by an executive order from Trump.
Instead, the new president's orders pause funding from the Inflation Reduction Act and another law known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Trump also directed agencies to research what they can do to implement his priorities and ordered his administration to start long rule-making processes to reverse Biden-era regulations.
He'll have to work with Republicans in Congress to overturn parts of the Inflation Reduction Act that he opposes. Even that will be difficult because a lot of the money is going to Republican congressional districts, where members are lobbying to keep those benefits.
"Energy and climate policy, which is complex, is not a speedboat," says Amy Myers Jaffe, director of the Energy, Climate Justice, and Sustainability Lab at New York University. "You don't turn the wheel and the boat immediately turns around. It's more like an aircraft carrier."
And just like a giant carrier, policymaking moves slowly.
Jaffe points to estimates that a lot more electricity will be needed to power data centers and manufacturing in coming years. "You might think that means we've got to build, build, build natural gas," Jaffe says. But it takes years to design, permit and construct a new gas-fired power plant, especially if a pipeline has to be built to supply it.
She says other climate-friendly technologies are quicker to deploy. Consumers can opt-in, for example, to what's called demand response, which Jaffe says allows utilities to turn thermostats up or down to use less energy when power is needed on the grid. "Those kinds of systems can be put in really rapidly, and more and more utilities are looking at them," she says.
This means that even though Trump might prefer a coal- or gas-fired power plant to generate the electricity, Jaffe says market forces might still lead utilities to choose a cleaner, cheaper option.
The complexity that Jaffe refers to works both ways. Despite Biden's climate agenda, U.S. oil and gas production increased dramatically during his time in office. Now, the U.S. produces more oil than any country in history.
And despite Trump's call to "drill, baby, drill," most oil companies show little interest in producing more, over concerns that increased supply would lower the cost of oil.
Trump's executive orders send a message
During his first term, Trump was a coal industry booster. In 2019, he tried to save an individual coal-fired power plant operated by the federally owned Tennessee Valley Authority. Despite Trump's intervention, the plant closed. The utility saved money by replacing it with electricity generated from natural gas and renewable energy.
For his second term, Trump's administration appears more organized in pursuing a fossil fuel agenda, according to Jackson Ewing, director of energy and climate policy at Duke University's Nicholas Institute.
"They have come out at the very beginning of the administration with a flurry of different executive orders that all have a certain degree of consistency with each other, in terms of their efforts to prioritize oil and gas and deprioritize other forms of electricity," says Ewing.
Ewing says there are limits on the federal government that could hinder Trump. "States and municipalities … still have a lot of power over what happens at those subnational levels," he says.
Many state and local governments have climate plans of their own. And, as with the first Trump administration, those governments have banded together to tell other countries that they're still serious about meeting the goals in the Paris Agreement.
Companies in the private sector also have climate plans they are unlikely to abandon.
"They're making decadal-level investments and decisions that transcend presidential administrations," says Ewing. "They see some political risk in operating as though decarbonization and climate commitments are gone forever."
Ewing says there are a lot of uncertainties about where these Trump executive orders will lead, because they contain few details. As those details emerge, he says, there likely will be legal challenges. Ewing says that for now, the orders can be seen as sending a message.
"And that message is that we're not in this business of energy transition anymore as a federal government, and that if you are going to stay in the good graces of our administration, then you need to follow suit," Ewing says.
He believes the country turning back to fossil fuels could run counter to the country's long-term interests. Ewing points to a trajectory toward cleaner forms of energy around the world.
"There is enormous potential in the energy transition both for the U.S. and global environmental health, but also for job creation and economic vitality and global competitiveness," Ewing says. Focusing on fossil fuels now could make it more difficult for the U.S. to dominate those emerging industries in the future.
Copyright 2025 NPR
