A key focus of Trump’s campaign was his vow to substantially increase fossil fuel exploitation in the US – Image: Alex Brandon/AP Photo/picture alliance
As Donald Trump hustles to assemble his governing team, environmental analysts have been looking for signs of what to expect from his second term. And for many, the outlook is bleak.
Donald Trump, an avowed climate skeptic, has made no secret of his plans for his second presidency.
On the campaign trail and since his reelection, he has pledged to boost fossil fuel exploitation, cancel tax credits for electric vehicles and clean energy projects, unravel environmental regulations, and claw back unspent funds from what he has called the “green new scam,” landmark climate legislation signed by outgoing President Joe Biden.
Trump’s rhetoric has echoed many proposals outlined in Project 2025, a 900-page playbook by the ultraconservative Heritage Foundation. Though Trump publicly distanced himself from the plan, several authors have been nominated for key positions.
They include Russ Vought, who as a top budget official would help set the administration’s priorities and who, in Project 2025, stressed the overarching importance of the “president’s agenda.”
‘A very destructive administration’
“We have no illusions that this is going to be a very destructive administration,” said Rachel Cleetus, the policy director for climate and energy at the US-based Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). “They are anti-science at their core.”
Cleetus said she had yet to see any indication from the incoming government that it would use accepted climate research to “help guide good policymaking” and act in the public interest.
“Instead of independent judgment and expertise, there’s a lot of almost cult-like loyalty to a president who has taken a very sharp posture against clean energy, completely beholden to fossil fuel interests,” she told DW.
And with both chambers of the Republican-controlled Congress and the conservative-majority Supreme Court likely on the president’s side, at least until the midterm elections in 2026, Cleetus said there were “very few barriers” left to resist Trump’s plans.
“All of that together, it’s a very sobering landscape,” she said.
Budget cuts, weakened laws at Environmental Protection Agency
Trump’s pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), former New York congressman Lee Zeldin, consistently opposed environmental protection and clean energy investments during his time in office. An NGO tracking political support for green policies gave him a 14% score for his voting record.
Announcing his pick on November 11, the president-elect said Zeldin would help “unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air and water on the planet.”
As EPA head, Zeldin is expected to target many strict new rules introduced by the Biden administration, covering everything from air and water pollution to drilling, biodiversity, and toxic substances — a repeat of what Trump ordered the EPA to do when he took over from Barack Obama in 2017.
“They talk about clean air and clean water, but they’re [planning] to roll back all of these […] pollution standards that are specifically designed to protect people’s health and protect the environment,” said Cleetus. “They’re talking about slashing budgets, attacking staffing in all of these agencies.”
Mandy Gunasekara, the EPA’s chief of staff during Trump’s first presidency and a contributing author to Project 2025, told The New York Times in October that the plan for Trump’s second term would be to “tear down and rebuild” its structures. During Trump’s first presidency, the agency saw its budget stagnate and had to contend with losing more than 1,100 employees, many demoralized by the weakening or removal of more than 100 environmental rules.
Leading environmental groups have criticized Zeldin’s nomination, with Ben Jealous, executive director of US environmental organization, the Sierra Club, saying it “lays bare Donald Trump’s intentions to, once again, sell our health, our communities, our jobs, and our future out to corporate polluters.”
“We need a steady, experienced hand at EPA to marshal federal resources to fight climate change and utilize the full power of the law to protect communities from toxic pollution,” Abigail Dillen, president of the nonprofit environmental law organization Earthjustice, said in a statement on November 12. “Lee Zeldin is not that person.”
‘Drill, baby drill!’
A key focus of Trump’s campaign was his vow to turbocharge the extraction of planet-heating fossil fuels — which has already raked in record profits in recent years. Like Project 2025, he has spoken of restoring America’s energy independence and promised voters he will “cut your energy prices in half.”
Trump wants to boost the extraction of oil and natural gas in the US, at the expense of renewable energy – Image: Gary Kazanjian/AP/picture alliance
Chris Wright, a climate skeptic and Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Energy, is CEO of Liberty Energy, a power generation company focused on fracking and natural gas. He has enthusiastically touted the benefits of hydrocarbons like coal, oil, and gas, writing in a January 2024 company report that there was “no such thing as ‘clean’ or ‘dirty’ energy.”
“Trump is stacking his administration with executives from some of the largest fossil fuel corporations,” wrote the Sierra Club on its website. “They want to loosen regulations, roll back clean energy progress, and destroy our planet for their profit.”
Congratulating Trump on his victory on November 6, Tim Tarpley, president of the Energy Workforce & Technology Council trade association, said he anticipated the new administration would move quickly to increase fracking on federal land and speed up permits for oil and gas projects, including in the Gulf of Mexico.
Trump to target clean energy, electric cars
Renewable energy projects and electric vehicles (EVs) will also be in the crosshairs come January. Trump is looking to undo federal mandates to reduce vehicle emissions and billions in consumer tax credits for clean energy projects and electric cars, part of Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act — even though clean energy and EV projects have created tens of thousands of new jobs in the last few years.
Industry analysts, however, believe it won’t be easy for Trump to follow through on his plans to gut the IRA. Some of the funds are already invested in projects across the country — lithium extraction operations in California, solar panel plants in Texas, and factories making batteries and electric cars in Georgia — and despite Republican criticism of the legislation, well-paying jobs do enjoy some bipartisan support.
Nearly 60% of the clean energy projects announced since 2022 are in Republican congressional districts, according to a September 2024 report from E2, a nonprofit that advocates for environmental economic policies — in states like Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Michigan, Arizona, and Indiana, which all backed Trump in the election. These projects are expected to add more than $400 billion to US gross domestic product in the coming years.
Highlighting the boom in renewable energy in places like China, India, and Brazil, Cleetus said any reversal of the IRA provisions would be “destructive” and risk that “the US will be left behind in this global clean energy revolution,” with supply chains being set up elsewhere.
“I think there would be a lot of opposition from state and local entities, from businesses, from workers,” she said.
Climate issues increasingly hard to ignore
While the raft of changes under Trump have alarmed environmental experts, Cleetus said it won’t happen overnight. “There are many things that can’t be undone just by the stroke of a pen,” she said, citing the complex regulatory and administrative process, not to mention legal challenges. “We can expect legal avenues to be very active under the Trump administration.”
And even with Trump planning a slew of executive orders on his first day, which would require no approval from Congress, legislation or legal challenges could delay how they come into effect.
Cleetus added that the US may also not find it so easy to ignore environmental issues the second time around, both at home and on the international stage — especially with Trump preparing to pull out of the Paris agreement again.
“Climate has now become a top-tier issue in global diplomacy,” she said, pointing out the increasingly complex ties to trade, security, and economic issues. “Many, many developing countries, lower income countries are facing just absolutely catastrophic impacts from climate change. And so the US will find it difficult to separate its geopolitical interests from climate.” (DW/NAN 21-01-25)
