Trump takes aim at Biden's green investments with ‘Drill, baby, drill'

The first time that Donald Trump ran for the White House he vowed to save the ailing coal industry.

Instead the jobs kept disappearing. The industry couldn’t compete.

Fewer tons of coal were mined even as he disparaged clean energy in favor of fossil fuels and worked to eliminate environmental regulations meant to curb global warming. 

Today as Trump prepares to return to the White House and seems no less hostile toward renewable power, environmentalists are hoping economic factors will again win over ideology. 

“We are already seeing market forces beat political posturing,” said August Fern, a partner at Baruch Future Ventures, a family investment firm focused on climate technology. “When a new solar plant is the lowest cost option, it will beat out fossil-fueled power every time.”

She and others predict that progress will continue across many green fronts, from improving the production and storage of renewable energy to cutting air and water pollution. Projects funded by the Biden administration’s signature climate change programs — the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act — have sent funds to Republican as well as Democratic areas, bringing jobs and promising greater resilience to natural disasters.  Cities and states are moving forward with commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Businesses have made long-term investments toward manufacturing electric vehicles and other green technology.

Photo by Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images

That optimism aside, a second Trump administration still could jeopardize the reduction of emissions that environmentalists say is needed to lessen the damage of climate change, which is increasingly more severe and expensive.

In the United States in September, Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina, a region many thought safe from the worst effects of a warming world. More than 8,000 jobs were lost in the Asheville metropolitan area the following month and the storm was one of 24 climate disasters that, as of Nov. 1, caused losses of $1 billion each in the country, according to the National Centers of Environmental Information, part of the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA.

Across the world, this year once again will be the hottest on record. 

Daniel Farber, the faculty director of the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at University of California, Berkeley Law, believes the country will do what is needed to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere but added, “What worries me is whether we’ll get there soon enough.”

'Drill, baby, drill' is back

Trump talked frequently about coal mining in 2016 but he mostly avoided the topic this recent election. His oft repeated promise — “Miners are going back to work, folks” -- fizzled. Coal production peaked at 1.2 billion tons in 2008 but then began to drop as the country shifted to natural gas and renewable energy. Employment in the industry more than halved to fewer than 40,000 jobs in 2021 from more than 86,000 at the height.

"Coal as a percentage of electricity generation has gone from 50% in the U.S. to under 20%, which is just a remarkable realignment of what had been the sort of default fuel for decades," said Nicholas Muller, a professor of economics, engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

"Of course, that's not to say that all of that capacity has been replaced by renewables or something completely clean," he said. "Natural gas has stepped in to fill to fill that gap, in a sense. But it's also the case that renewables have become a much more significant contributor."

This year’s mantra is the resurrected “Drill, baby, drill,” as Trump calls for U.S. energy dominance through increased gas and oil production, though oil production is at record levels. He has said he will withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, the treaty on climate change — again. His cabinet picks have downplayed the dangers of climate change with Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright, his choice for energy secretary, arguing that there is no climate crisis even if the planet is warming and former Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York, his pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency, pledging to pursue energy dominance.

The U.S. is already the world’s largest producer of oil and gas, and the industry has a wish list, as CNBC reported: increase exports of natural gas, lease more federal land for drilling, ease pipeline permitting and repeal strict standards for vehicle emissions and fuel efficiency. 

Compared to when Trump was first in office, however, fewer people on the political right are dismissing climate change as a hoax, a result of how much more visible the damages are, said Todd Khozein, the CEO of SecondMuse, a global climate innovation company. 

“You see buckling roads in Oregon and you see more severe and more rapid hurricanes in Florida and you see fire, bursting wildfires in December in California,” Khozein said. “The pace and the unpredictability of a changing climate is more significant and severe and affecting, really, people across the political spectrum.”

Add to the more dire dangers the more competitive market in green energy. Since Republicans introduced the defiant drilling slogan in 2008, the energy mix in the U.S. has changed dramatically. In 2023, renewables were responsible for 21% of all U.S. electricity generation, up from 10% in 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Another 19% of last year's generation was from nuclear energy, and 60% from the still dominant fossil fuels. 

"The train's left the station on climate tech," Khozein said. "Pound for pound, you're going build cheaper energy generation if you're looking at renewables. And then you have a really hungry nation that needs more energy. Baby drill is not going to get you to where you're going to go."

The state with the most capacity for power generation from big solar installations? Texas, which overtook California this year. It was already the country’s largest wind producer, is now second in battery storage and at the beginning of December, Gov. Gregg Abbott was touting the number of green energy jobs it offered — through also what he called Texas’ “all-of-the-above energy strategy.”

“Over the last eight years, it’s becoming more and more obvious that we need these technologies,” said Fern, who also is the chair of the climate tech track at SkyDeck, an entrepreneur incubator at the University of California, Berkeley. “There’s just a greater public understanding across the country, the world, that we need to look at doing things differently.”

“Burning coal means we can all have air like India,” she said.

India, where coal accounts for more than half of the country’s energy needs, has been choking on air pollution this year, and its capital, New Delhi, is now ranked the most polluted city in the world, according to an annual world air quality report. In the United States, by contrast, between 1970 and 2020, the emissions of six common pollutants, carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide among them, dropped by 78% as a result of the Clean Air Act.

The International Energy Agency, in its report Tracking Clean Energy Progress, found that renewables accounted for 30% of global electricity generation in 2022, while investment in clean energy reached a record $1.6 trillion, an increase of almost 15% from 2021. But even as it noted that the new energy economy was emerging faster than many realized, it urged greater focus on solar energy, electric vehicles and heat pumps to reach the goal of net zero greenhouse emissions by 2050.

Worldwide, China is leading the way with renewable electricity capacity with what the International Energy Agency described as a booming market for solar panels and wind energy.

"Renewable power capacity additions will continue to increase in the next five years, with solar PV and wind accounting for a record 96% of it because their generation costs are lower than for both fossil and non-fossil alternatives in most countries and policies continue to support them," the agency forecast.

Green investments went to GOP districts

President Joe Biden’s climate initiatives are part of $2 trillion in federal spending over the next decade meant to make infrastructure greener and the country more economically competitive. The landmark Inflation Reduction Act signed in 2022 is the largest and would allocate $391 billon to replace fossil fuels in the form of tax credits, grants and loan guarantees.

It is boosting the use of solar panels, wind turbines and heat pumps, providing incentives for electric vehicles and other green transportation, and encouraging investments in energy efficiency.

Trump has said he would rescind any unspent Inflation Reduction Act funds once he assumes office but much of the money disbursed through the clean energy laws has gone to Republican districts. That's what Jay Turner, a professor of environmental studies at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and his students have found as they follow the North American clean energy supply chain at the website The Big Green Machine.

"Our tracking and analysis at The Big Green Machine show that 78% of $126.3 billion in post-IRA investments in batteries, EVs, wind, and solar supply chains have gone to Republican districts," Turner wrote on the Bluesky social media site in November.

As those investments create new jobs and support local economies with green technology, Trump could feel hamstrung.

"We expect there will be pressure to keep the programs intact, contrary to campaign promises," Fern said.

But if the grants are mostly spent, Trump also has threatened to kill the $7,500 consumer tax credit for electric vehicle purchases, prompting governors such as California's Gavin Newsom to vow to revive the state's tax credit if that happens. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation urged Congress in a letter to keep the federal tax credit and the current energy secretary, Janet Granholm, told Reuters that eliminating it would cede territory to China by slowing the transition to electric vehicles by the American auto makers in Detroit — General Motors, Ford and Stellantis.

Other tax credits for home energy efficiency and home solar energy could also be in jeopardy.

Battling California over clean air

California and 11 other states plan to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035, a policy the Environmental Protection Agency approved on Dec. 18. Trump is likely to revoke that permission once he becomes president, setting up a legal battle with the state.

California has long set stricter clean air standards than those required by the federal government. That's because when a precursor to the Clean Air Act was enacted in 1967, California had already put in place tougher standards on emissions from vehicle tailpipes to address its serious smog problem. The EPA has allowed it to continue through waivers to the Clean Air Act and has permitted other states to adopt California's restrictions. Together those states now comprise nearly half of the U.S. auto market.

Ohio and 16 other states as well as the oil and gas industry had argued in court that the EPA's decision exceeded the federal government's authority under the Clean Air Act, but this month, the U.S. Supreme Court turned back the challenge.

Louise Bedsworth, the executive director of the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at the University of California, Berkeley Law, noted that auto manufactures have made voluntary agreements to cut emissions -- Ford, Honda, BMW of North America and Volkswagen Group of America in 2019 and Stellantis this year -- even if California is unable to enforce its standards because of litigation or federal action.

"If California loses its waiver authority, that will limit some actions," she told NBC. "If the automakers stick to their commitments, that could counter some, but not all, of the impact of that action."

Muller, of Carnegie Mellon University, pointed to California’s cap-and-trade program, which during Trump’s first term was extended until 2030. It establishes a cap statewide on carbon dioxide emissions and allows companies to buy and sell pollution credits. In that way they can exceed the cap. 

“It’s well established,” he said. “The markets associated with the carbon credits that are allocated, auctioned and traded under that program are well established. I don't see that going anywhere."

Similarly the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative is a market based effort among 11 states to limit greenhouse gas emissions on the East Coast. Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, one of the states, withdrew the state from the program but in November a court ruled his action unlawful. Republicans in Pennsylvania also are trying to leave.

"And I don't see it being fundamentally affected either by a change in administration," Muller said, "because it's wholly operated by states and and related entities."

What's happened in the courts?

During Trump's first two years in office, the environmental legal group Earthjustice filed 120 lawsuits against his administration's policies and prevailed in cases involving the pesticide chlorpyrifos, protections from industrial chemical disasters, high ozone levels and drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic Ocean. The Trump administration failed to follow federal statutory requirements for environmental rule-making, including scientific and cost-benefit analysis, but did do harm by slowing implementation of needed protections, Earthjustice argued in a special report.

"It was pretty obvious they were losing cases on pretty basic errors sometimes and in other places just because they didn't really do their homework in terms of the evidence," Farber said. "So you would think they would learn from that experience. I'm not at all sure that they will."

In a 2020 article, Brookings counted 74 actions the Trump administration took to weaken environmental laws. Trump was particularly focused on rolling back policy to address climate change, it noted in the article, "What is the Trump administration’s track record on the environment?"

Among those actions, Trump tried to replace President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan with a weaker regulation but was overturned by a federal appellate court. The dispute over power plants continued, however, and in 2022, in the case West Virginia v. EPA, the U.S. Supreme Court curtailed the EPA's ability to regulate carbon emissions from existing plants. The court’s three liberal justices said that the majority had stripped the E.P.A. of “the power to respond to the most pressing environmental challenge of our time.”

'A sharp turn' on climate policy

One analysis warns that a second Trump presidency means 4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions could be added to the atmosphere by 2030 over what could have been expected from a second Biden term. The analysis by the website Carbon Brief, done before Biden dropped out of the race, projected emissions under Trump dropping by 28% below the peak. That's far short of the 50% target that Biden set at the beginning of his term.

What will that mean to efforts to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit over preindustrial levels, which climate scientists say is needed to escape the worst effects of climate change even as the world is already experiencing extreme temperatures, floods and failing crops?

"The US, which is currently the world’s second-largest greenhouse-gas emitter and has added more climate pollution to the atmosphere than any other nation, is now very unlikely to hit Biden’s 2030 goal," the MIT Technology Review wrote in an article, "The US is about to make a sharp turn on climate policy." "That’s basically the final nail in the coffin for efforts to limit global warming to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) over preindustrial levels."

A second Trump administration might be more organized and strategic than it was the first time he was in office, but since then coalitions around global warming have formed of businesses, states, universities and civic organizations, Bedsworth said. Organizations such as the U.S. Climate Alliance, a bipartisan group of 24 governors, are committed to increasing the use of clean energy, reducing emissions and alleviating the unequal devastation of climate disasters.

"You have that incredible momentum and then you also have the market, which has kept up with and exceeded in many cases that momentum as well," she said.

As Trump returns to the White House, he could limit federal subsidies that can help companies develop green technology faster but in the end the companies have to find markets and earn profits for investors such as Baruch Future Ventures. Many areas of clean technology are well on their way to standing alone without government help, Fern said.

"I don't know that there is a sector that I am most concerned about struggling with the lack of government support because it really broadly reaches across everything," she said. "If you look at what we're talking about, we're talking about clean energy systems, clean air, clean water, healthy families."

"We might have a hiccup," she said. "There might be some things that will be more difficult, but in the end, it's all going work out because we have a lot of really great, really talented, really smart people working on these problems."