- President Donald Trump is bulldozing his predecessor's green energy agenda.
- There are ramifications not only in the United States but abroad.
- Closer to home, some Utah residents are relieved their gas stoves can remain in their kitchens.
Deanna Buck loves her gas stovetop.
“Well, the fact is gas is so quick I have not used an electric stovetop in years,” the Hooper woman says.
Buck has a dual stove appliance, meaning it has an electric oven. One is quite small, heats up quickly and can handle muffins and cookies. The other, larger one she uses for oven-baked meals.
“I am shocked at how long at that bigger one takes to preheat,” while her five burners provide gas heat instantaneously, she said.
The convenience, too, is that her appliance has an electric starter that she can easily light should the power go out.
In her 16 years in her home she has never had a health concern. There was a push under the Biden administration to phase out the gas stoves because of the indoor pollution they create.
“It just sounded so stupid, I didn’t think anyone would implement it,” she added. “If they had, I think I would have joined a march.”
It is the same way with Andrea Widdison, who had grown up with electric stoves and didn’t give them much thought, other than her irritation of being able to control the cooking temperature in an ideal way for her recipes.
When she and her husband moved to Hooper, her new residence included a gas stove.
“The difference is amazing,” she said. “I enjoy cooking a lot more on a gas stove because you have so much better control of the temperature.”
Widdison said she opposed the rationale of the Biden administration.
“I think the premise was faulty because their premise is that gas stoves produce so much pollution because they have a pilot light that’s on all the time, so they are releasing small amounts of of combustion products into the house.” she said. “But people have had gas stoves and gas heat for, gosh, you know, over 100 years, and they say that it’s unhealthy for people, but we haven’t noticed that it causes any respiratory problems or anything like that.”
Personal choice, appliances and straws
President Donald Trump’s executive order on “Unleashing American Energy,” takes care of any effort to get ride of gas stoves. It also safeguards people’s personal choice for lightbulbs, dishwashers, washing machines, water heaters, toilets, and shower heads, designed to promote market competition and innovation within the manufacturing and appliance industries.
On Monday Trump moved to revoke the mandate on the federal government’s use of plastic straws, complaining they do not work.
“It’s a ridiculous situation,” he said, according to an Associated Press story. “We’re going back to plastic straws,” Trump said as he signed an executive order to reverse federal purchasing policies that encourage paper straws and restrict plastic ones. The order directs federal agencies to stop buying paper straws “and otherwise ensure that paper straws are no longer provided within agency buildings.”
Trump also rolled back the electric vehicle mandate announced in 2021 — which directed that by 2030, half of all new cars sold in the United States would be electric, not gas powered. Biden’s plan also prioritized infrastructure development, underscored by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. It directed $7.5 billion to establish a nationwide network of 500,000 EV charging stations.
To undercut Biden’s move, Trump suspended the distribution of unspent funds of $5 billion allocated for EV charging stations and potentially will repeal the $7,500 federal tax credit for EV purchases.
Put simply, Trump said, “You will be able to buy the car of your choice.”
According to Innovation Newsnetwork, Trump is also asking the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider changes made to vehicle emissions rules set under Biden.
The order stresses the termination of the Green New Deal and by necessity suspends the disbursement of funds related to that policy by federal agencies.
Permitting and environmental reviews by the appropriate agencies will be expedited under Trump’s executive order. The current environmental review process poses significant delays on pipelines, transportation corridors and even green energy pursuits such as geothermal development, according to Utah legislators, local communities and industry across the United States.
The American Clean Power Association, for example, said environmental review delays have had these consequences:
- 100 gigawatts of clean energy.
- $100 billion or more of lost investment.
- 150,000 lost American jobs.
- Delayed energy independence from foreign sources.
The group said the average timeline for a clean energy project to obtain necessary National Environmental Policy Act reviews is 4.5 years. For transmission projects, the average wait is even longer — 6.5 years. And it can take some projects a decade to get a permit. By comparison, it took that long to build the entire Panama Canal, it took five years to build the Hoover Dam and a decade is 2½ times longer than it took to build the Golden Gate Bridge.
In the order, Trump’s energy secretary was directed to restart reviews of applications for approvals of liquified natural gas export projects as expeditiously as possible, consistent with the law. Biden’s action to pause new construction of LNG export terminals was upended by a federal judge.
Supporters of LNG exports saw it as a way to stabilize the energy economy abroad by helping U.S. allies and weaning them from adversarial sources. Natural gas is largely viewed as one of the biggest contributors to declining U.S. emissions.
Biden’s action struck at the heart of the U.S. success in LNG exports by pausing construction of new terminals — much to the delight of fossil fuel foes and the dismay of industry.
According to the U.S. Energy Administration, the United States surpassed its own success rate of LNG exports in 2023 by 10% — a record of 20.9 billion cubic feet per day.
The administration said since 2017, the United States has exported more natural gas than it has imported. Prior to 2017, the last time U.S. natural gas exports exceeded natural gas imports was in 1956.
Trump’s other goals outlined in his executive order go beyond personal choice for U.S. residents, but also direct the successful pursuit of domestic mining and orders a review of the withdrawal of public lands and potential revision. Additionally, the U.S. Geological Survey will consider updating its list of critical minerals, including the potential for including uranium.
Several companies have plans to reopen uranium mines in Utah now that the price has escalated and the the popular newcomer in the energy sphere is nuclear energy, which taps uranium resources.
Utah held the position as the third largest producer of uranium in the United States and is home to the only operating processing facility, White Mesa in Blanding. The mill has also expanded into critical mineral processing, high on Trump’s list for stockpiling these type of minerals for domestic energy security.
According to the World Economic Forum, China has “attained global dominance in critical minerals through strategic long-term investments, industrial policies and advantages such as lower labour costs and more lenient regulations. This control extends to 85%-90% of global rare earth elements from mining to refining and 92% of global manufacturing of rare earth element magnets,” the forum said.
It added: China supplies over half of the 30 critical raw materials identified by the European Commission and nearly 40% of the European needs.
‘Drill baby drill’
Trump’s executive order directs the encouragement of energy exploration and production on federal lands and waters, including on the Outer Continental Shelf, “in order to meet the needs of our citizens and solidify the United States as a global energy leader long into the future.”
Delaying the schedule of mandated lease-sales of oil and gas on federal lands, plus the tepid offering of land up for bid paints a dramatic picture of Biden’s insistence on abandoning fossil fuels in favor of green energy.
As an example, across the United States here are how the numbers of new leases shake down:
- 2012, under President Barack Obama — 1,729.
- 2019, under President Donald Trump — 1,841.
- 2021, under President Joe Biden — 407.
- 2023, under Biden — 144.
During the entirety of the Biden administration, the BLM offered 15 lease parcels of 27,615 acres in Utah. Of those, four sold, making up 7,571 acres, said Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance.
Federal lands remain important to the state’s oil and gas production. Utah statistics show that in 2023, 13.4% of the state’s production of oil came from federal lands, although as much as 31.6% could have tapped other areas — including federal lands — because of directional drilling and the path it takes. The percentage of natural gas production on federal lands was more — 52.4% — an amount that is significant.
More ramifications
Sgamma was picked Wednesday to head the Bureau of Land Management which oversees this leasing process and many other land management aspects involving multiple use of public lands, but her selection is already stoking stiff opposition by environmental groups who lay claim she will rip apart pristine landscapes in favor of oil and gas development. Future hearings will likely dissect her positions.
Trump also cancelled new wind development on federal waters and temporarily paused a controversial wind project in Idaho that spanned more than 50,000 acres of 230 turbines 600 feet tall.
Although the U.S. has produced more crude oil than any other nation for six consecutive years, Trump says he has no intention of backing off. That energy is need for U.S. growth and for foreign alliances that are friendly with U.S. interests.
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the capacity is at approximately 358 million barrels, less than half what it will hold and at its lowest level in 40 years.
If no additional oil were drilled, the current strategic reserve would be depleted in just 18 days, according to the Hill. However, even if the reserve were filled to its historical peak capacity, it would require just 36 days to drain it dry. But critics saw the drawdown as a faulty choice and say it needs to be at optimum capacity.
Oil and gas industry representatives say even with the new “drill baby drill” approach, it will take time, money and appropriate citing of infrastructure to get it out of the ground and into refineries. So, it will take time to ease the price at the pumps — one of the most common and central complaints by U.S. consumers.
Industry, too, warns of the effects of tariffs on prices because most of the crude produced in the United States is “light.” And the light crude is not a suitable replacement from the heavier crude that comes from Mexico and Canada.
According to an explainer by the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers:
“A proposed 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico would seriously disrupt the supply chain U.S. refineries rely on to produce the fuels and petroleum products Americans use every day. Even with upgrades to existing infrastructure, many refineries simply aren’t built to accommodate such a significant tariff on Canadian crude,” the document said. “Given the long timelines for planning and permitting the necessary changes, plus the fact that refineries depend on refining margins to stay profitable, it would take several years for refineries to adapt to the changes in oil trade flows brought about by these tariffs. In the meantime, many refineries would struggle financially and many might be forced to shut down.”
The paper noted that the last major refinery built in the United States was in 1976 due to the belief in a declining demand.
According to observers, it was a faulty assumption.
“No one back then could have anticipated the shale boom that arrived in the 2000s. It is for this reason that many refineries are specifically set up to handle crude oil from Canada, Mexico, and other Latin American countries,” the Utah Petroleum Association said.
The Institute for Energy Research also emphasized the potential disruption in the supply chain regarding crude oil.
It even warned that the tariffs might even force some refineries to close.
That would not be upsetting to groups who argue fossil fuels should be kept in the ground in favor of clean energy. But with Trumps eradication of a host of green energy and climate change programs, that could put the United States in an energy quandary.
At this point, Trump has pushed paused on the tariffs while negotiations remain ongoing.