by Brian Dabbs
E&E News. EnergyWire
Veterans of the first Trump administration predicted in interviews what their former boss might do with energy policy if he returns to the White House.
More oil and gas permitting. Aggressive deregulation. Federal career staff relegated to the sidelines.
That’s the vision for American energy policy if former President Donald Trump wins the election in November, according to multiple conservative lobbyists and advocates who either served in the Trump administration or are angling for positions in a potential second one.
In interviews with E&E News, they said a second Trump term would mean regulatory rollbacks at EPA for power plants and cars, and a green light at the Interior Department for more fossil fuel development on public lands. The vision for Trump 2.0 gets murkier at the Department of Energy, which is releasing billions of dollars in grants from the Inflation Reduction Act and 2021 infrastructure law and helping to craft green tax breaks that many fossil fuel companies like…
Steve Milloy, a Trump EPA transition team member in 2016, said career staff were “allowed to interfere too much.”
“This time it will be different. I don’t think the staff will be allowed to interfere,” Milloy said.
But with tens of thousands of career staff in Washington, that could be a major challenge…
Trump’s allies claim Biden’s low-carbon policies won’t actually help the climate.
“All this stuff is going to have to be rolled back. It doesn’t do anything for the environment. It just costs a lot of money,” said Milloy. “The Trump administration is not going to be an administration that worries about carbon dioxide emissions.”
