Trump reelection locks in Climate Change

During Trump's first term, his administration rolled back dozens of environmental protections, according to an analysis by the Brookings Institution. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement on climate change; tried to weaken regulations on power plant emissions; opened part of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas development; and eased a rule that was designed to reduce polluted wastewater from coal plants.

If Trump’s reelected, environmental groups will almost certainly file lawsuits challenging the administration’s actions. Some of those cases could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, which Trump reshaped in his first term to create a 6 to 3 conservative supermajority.

While the conservative justices diverge on some rulings, their decisions regarding the environment have curtailed the federal government’s authority to protect it, making the Supreme Court arguably Trump’s most potent climate legacy.

In 2022, the Supreme Court limited the power of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon emissions from power plants. And last year, it curtailed the EPA’s authority over wetlands, which improve water quality and reduce flood risks. Now, allies of the fossil fuel industry are pressing the court to side with oil and gas companies in a climate lawsuit that could cost them billions of dollars.

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Trump has said that if he’s reelected, he’d try to block lawsuits that attempt to hold the oil and gas industry responsible for some of the damages from global warming.

The election’s about the ‘pace of change’

Despite all that, Trump would be hard pressed to steer U.S. energy markets in a completely different direction, or to change how companies approach climate change.

For starters, U.S. oil and gas production is influenced by global prices: Companies drill more when prices are high and less when they’re low. U.S. presidents have very little sway over those corporate decisions and, ultimately, fuel prices.

“There's no magic spigot to turn on overnight,” says McCown of the Hudson Institute.

It’s also unlikely that Congress would repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, say analysts like David Brown, director of the energy transition practice at Wood Mackenzie, a research firm. Republicans’ unsuccessful push to overturn President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act underscores how hard it is to undo legislation. And a big chunk of the money in the Inflation Reduction Act is flowing to red states.

In a recent survey, 62% of registered voters said they’d prefer to vote for a politician who supports action on global warming, and 63% said developing sources of clean energy should be a high or very high priority for the president and Congress. The polling was done this spring by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University.

“I don't see [Trump] spending his political capital on pulling the rug out from under new EV manufacturing in states like South Carolina and Georgia and Tennessee,” Robinson says. “That just doesn't politically make sense.”

Energy analysts say companies making those kinds of investments are committed to reducing emissions. Many move slower than activists would like, and some have delayed plans to reassess their strategies. But they’re under pressure to take action from their customers and investors, who are feeling the impacts of climate change in their own lives.

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“Climate change is not abstract anymore,” says Geoff Gisler, who oversees legal work at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “And the connection between how we get our energy and the consequences of climate change, I think it's a very real, tangible thing to folks.”

Many corporations have also concluded that transitioning away from fossil fuels is good for their bottom lines, because there are “demonstrated savings” from renewable energy, Brown says.

John Ketchum, chief executive of NextEra Energy, said in an interview with Bloomberg News in June that he expects renewable energy will be used to meet the bulk of rising U.S. power demand in the coming decades, partly because natural gas plants are more expensive. NextEra owns one of America’s largest utilities, which used natural gas to generate about three-quarters of its electricity last year. But NextEra’s investments have also placed it among the world’s biggest renewable energy companies.

Meanwhile, actions Trump might take to aid fossil fuel companies could help other parts of the energy industry, as well. For example, Republicans want to overhaul environmental permitting to make it easier to build things like oil and gas pipelines. Easing regulations could also speed construction of wind and solar projects.

This election is about the “pace of change” in the energy industry, and how fast the country can cut emissions in the coming decades, says Brown of Wood Mackenzie.

If Trump is reelected, Wood Mackenzie expects the U.S. would move more slowly in reducing carbon pollution, but it wouldn’t stop. “It does not mean that you stop electrification or you stop retiring coal plants or electric vehicles are a thing of the past starting with the next administration, if it's a Trump administration,” Brown says.