The new American president will use this legislative tool in order, in particular, to accelerate the establishment of new oil and gas operations while reversing certain decisions of Joe Biden.
Donald Trump was quick to take action on energy matters. During his inauguration speech on Monday, January 20, the new American president announced that he was going to declare a “state of national energy emergency”, in accordance with a promise he had made during the electoral campaign. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University indicates that this legislative tool allows the president to use up to 150 special powers usually used in the face of natural disasters or even terrorist attacks.
This time, Donald Trump intends to declare a state of national emergency as part of his plan to free up American energy production while reversing decisions taken by Joe Biden to fight climate change. The measure will be taken in the wake of his inauguration speech on Monday and will notably facilitate the establishment of new oil and gas operations in the United States.
Powering artificial intelligence factories
During his speech in the Capital One Arena, a 20,000-seat venue in the center of the American capital, the president-elect referred to the objective of this increase in energy production. “We are going to use our emergency powers to allow countries, entrepreneurs and people who have a lot of money to build big factories, artificial intelligence factories,” he said.
“We need double the energy we already have, and it’s going to end up being more than that.”
If Donald Trump should not be able to use these special powers to build more power plants, he should, however, lift the moratorium on new American LNG export licenses, a measure promulgated by his predecessor. He is also expected to order his administration to remove federal incentives for electric vehicles. Other measures Trump is expected to backtrack on include government regulations on vehicle pollution and fuel economy that have helped reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
-No new drilling in a vast maritime area around the country
Finally, Donald Trump should quickly return to Joe Biden's “last gesture for the environment”. At the beginning of January, the Democratic president announced a ban on any new “offshore” oil or gas drilling in a maritime area covering more than 2.5 million square kilometers. The ban, which has no end date, will apply along the Atlantic coast of the United States and the Pacific coast, in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska, in Bering Strait. “The time has come to protect these coasts for our children and grandchildren,” justified the outgoing president in a press release, adding:
“It is clear to me that the relatively minor fossil fuel potential of the areas does not justify the risks to the environment, public health and the economy that new concessions and drilling would pose.”
His successor in the White House has already announced that he would “rescind the ban immediately” in a radio interview. But, it could actually be difficult for the 78-year-old billionaire to reverse this decision by Joe Biden, which is based on a 1953 law giving authority to the federal government over the exploitation of seabed resources off the coast. , the “Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act”. This text does not expressly provide for the right for the president to reverse, without going through Congress, a decision to ban new drilling.
According to Bloomberg, the legality of Donald Trump's cancellation will likely be decided by the federal courts. And the Republican president's record does not speak in his favor: during his first term, he tried to cancel a withdrawal of Arctic waters, this time dating from the Obama mandate and was ultimately rejected by a federal district court based in Alaska.
