IN THIS ISSUE:
- Trump’s Energy and Climate EOs Thus Far: Pt. 2
- New Ice Flow Research Tempers Sea Level Rise Claims
Trump’s Energy and Climate EOs Thus Far: Pt. 2
CCW 532 examined some of the executive orders (EOs) and policy memoranda President Donald Trump issued in the first hours of his administration to advance his goal of making America energy-dominant while creating jobs and shoring up national security. Below I discuss a few more of these actions and the responses so far.
Among Trump’s day-one actions was a regulatory freeze pending review. As far as I’m aware, this is an action every new presidential administration takes to halt the finalization of regulations proposed or issued by the previous administration in the last 60 days before they went out the door. This is especially consequential in Biden’s case because his administration embarked on an unmatched spending spree and regulatory flurry in the aftermath of Kamala Harris’ defeat. From expedited EV mandates to new appliance efficiency standards, to tax credits for used EV and alternative vehicle purchases, dozens of Biden’s slapdash late-term regs are now on hold while under review for approval or rejection by the Trump administration.
Trump’s memorandum requires the following:
Do not propose or issue any rule in any manner, including by sending a rule to the Office of the Federal Register (the “OFR”), until a department or agency head appointed or designated by the President after noon on January 20, 2025, reviews and approves the rule. …
Immediately withdraw any rules that have been sent to the OFR but not published in the Federal Register, so that they can be reviewed and approved. ….
Consistent with applicable law and subject to the exceptions described in paragraph 1, consider postponing for 60 days from the date of this memorandum the effective date for any rules that have been published in the Federal Register, or any rules that have been issued in any manner but have not taken effect, for the purpose of reviewing any questions of fact, law, and policy that the rules may raise. During this 60-day period, where appropriate and consistent with applicable law, consider opening a comment period to allow interested parties to provide comments about issues of fact, law, and policy raised by the rules postponed under this memorandum, and consider reevaluating pending petitions involving such rules.
So, no new rules are to be issued for now; pending, unfinalized rules are to be withdrawn; and finalized rules that have yet to take effect are paused for review and possible reopening of public comment and review.
The Biden administration was on the ball and pushed across many new rules during the second quarter of 2024, so many bad regulations will be untouched by this memorandum, though Trump’s new agency heads can reopen them. There are dozens of rules in various stages of development, review, and finalization, and possibly more than 100 will be halted by this action alone.
With Congress’ help, Trump can even be more effective. The Congressional Research Service estimates as many as a thousand regulatory actions Biden implemented since August 1, 2024 could be rescinded by Congress passing CRA resolutions. The Congressional Review Act allows Congress to overturn major rules implemented in the last 60 legislative days (days Congress is working or officially in session) and under other select other conditions. CRA resolutions of disapproval are not subject to Senate filibusters.
Trump signed more CRA resolutions passed by Congress, reversing late-term Obama administration rules, than all previous presidents combined. Biden, by contrast, was confronted with more CRA resolutions than any previous president, and he vetoed more CRA resolutions than all previous presidents combined, resolutions attempting to reverse endangered species rules, appliance standards, energy, and climate actions, etc., all passed on a bipartisan basis with Democratic support.
With Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, no possible filibuster, and a thousand consequential rules open for review, Trump may have to get out his signing pens again. Among the rules open for CRA repeal are Biden’s tax on methane emissions, tax credits for various “green energy” projects, and recent EPA drinking water rules. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), joined by other Republicans, is already leading efforts to adopt a CRA blocking Biden administration restrictions on water heaters that would raise the cost to consumers and limit choices. CRA resolutions of disapproval might be the easiest way to get many rules off the books permanently.
Trump’s EO 14037, Strengthening American Leadership in Clean Cars and Trucks, scrapped a Biden EO pushing the forced transition to half of all passenger vehicles on American roads being zero-emission by 2030, among other things. Biden’s EO set specific goals for the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency to establish new emissions, fuel economy, and fuel efficiency standards for passenger and heavy-duty vehicles. Trump’s EO should effectively halt all of them because none of the new standards were scheduled to take effect until model year 2027.
Trump issued a moratorium on permits for industrial wind facilities, both on- and offshore. This action has thrown the wind industry into disarray. One onshore wind facility has been cancelled—Idaho’s Lava Ridge facility, for which planning began in 2019 on property controlled by the Bureau of Land Management. Meanwhile, increasing costs and regulatory uncertainty have led to a number of companies pulling out of offshore wind projects along the east coast. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, long a proponent of offshore wind despite widespread open resistance from people, communities, and legislators in his state, saw the writing on the wall, finally threw in the towel, and canceled new wind project offers.
Even projects under construction that have building permits might be paused because Trump’s hostility to offshore wind puts a dark cloud over the projects. In addition to the construction permits they currently hold, each project needs permits to operate and hook up to the grid, not just to be built, and the Trump administration may refuse to issue operation permits. That would entail a lot of foreseeable sunk costs and monetary losses, losses their stockholders could object to. Lawsuits might result.
Further undercutting government support for climate initiatives, Trump has ordered the agencies under his control to scrub their websites of claims that climate change is causing various types of severe weather and natural disasters. This is a reversal from Biden’s “all of government” approach to hyping and lending support to climate alarm. Trump is on solid ground here: none of those agencies have a legal mandate or mission to study, report on, or fight climate change. Also, any published claims on government sites that state or imply climate change is causing weather disasters are unsupported by hard evidence or data. Such claims are lies and open to legal challenges which Trump’s Department of Justice probably would not defend against.
Doug Burgum, Trump’s recently approved Secretary of the Interior, is already hard at work putting some of Trump’s EOs into action. Burgum’s office issued a series of directives aimed at increasing domestic energy and minerals production. Reuters reports Burgum’s early orders direct the Department of Interior (DOI) to, among other things,
… identify emergency and legal authorities to speed project development and permitting in line with Trump’s energy emergency declaration and to eliminate burdensome regulations in part by reviewing appropriations under the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act laws.
… [T]he agency would eliminate at least 10 regulations for every new one introduced.
One of the orders revoked Biden’s withdrawal of large areas of federal waters from new offshore oil and gas development, while another seeks to boost resource development on federal and state lands in Alaska.
Sounds like the DOI is off to a good start in advancing Trump’s agenda of making America energy-dominant.
As discussed in CCW 532, Trump’s Unleashing American Energy EO directed the EPA to review the agency’s CO2 endangerment finding for possible reconsideration and withdrawal. The same order also took on the unjustified and badly designed “social cost of carbon” (SCC) calculation EPA developed to account for purported harms CO2 emissions cause.
The SCC process and results were flawed in formation and execution. First, since it is impossible to tie any particular extreme weather event or trend or any specific health impact or trend to CO2 emissions, the attempt to produce an SCC was a vain project from the get-go. If one can’t really identify a specific type of harm that is occurring due to CO2 emissions, as opposed to forecasted harms from flawed computer-model projections, there is no verifiable “social cost” to calculate.
Second, when shaping regulations, the EPA and other agencies are supposed to calculate the costs of the harms they are trying to prevent based on their domestic impact: how much impact on public health or the environment X problem, in this case climate change from CO2 emissions, is inflicting within the United States. In addition, the policies they propose or implement to fix the problem are supposed to reflect benefits solely accruing to the United States. The calculations of the costs and benefits are supposed to be limited to domestic harms from the problems, and domestic benefits from the proposed action to mitigate it. The EPA’s SCC, by contrast and in violation of law, considered the “cost” of U.S. emissions on the globe, and when calculating benefits EPA likewise considered international benefits.
In addition, once the EPA decided on how to conduct the SCC analysis for agencies to consider when implementing rules or considering permits, it should have at least followed the standard practices for such exercises. Among those practices are: (1) to use a standard or reasonable discount rate when considering the long-term cost of the problem under consideration and (2) to do a fair comparison of both the benefits of the activity being considered for restrictions, and the costs of the proposed restrictions themselves. As numerous analyses have detailed (for example, here, here, and here), EPA violated both tenets. The discount rate EPA used was unreasonably low and thus overestimated the reasonably expected costs of CO2 to human health and the environment and understated the costs of the proposed regulations. Worse still, the EPA failed to consider at all whether rising CO2 concentrations produced any benefits—which they do, especially with regard to food production.
Under more reasonable discount rate assumptions, and considering the social benefits of CO2 and potential costs related to CO2 regulations, some analyses find increased CO2 produces a net benefit to the United States and, if one is concerned about it, the world as a whole.
With this in mind, Trump’s Unleashing American Energy EO states,
The calculation of the “social cost of carbon” is marked by logical deficiencies, a poor basis in empirical science, politicization, and the absence of a foundation in legislation. Its abuse arbitrarily slows regulatory decisions and, by rendering the United States economy internationally uncompetitive, encourages a greater human impact on the environment by affording less efficient foreign energy producers a greater share of the global energy and natural resource market. Consequently, within 60 days of the date of this order, the Administrator of the EPA shall issue guidance to address these harmful and detrimental inadequacies, including consideration of eliminating the “social cost of carbon” calculation from any Federal permitting or regulatory decision.
In conjunction with that, Trump’s EO states,
The Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases (IWG), which was established pursuant to Executive Order 13990, is hereby disbanded, and any guidance, instruction, recommendation, or document issued by the IWG is withdrawn as no longer representative of governmental policy.
Sources: The Register; The Hot Shot Wake Up; Inside Privacy; Congressional Research Service; The White House; Fox Rothschild; Reuters; Politico
New Ice Flow Research Tempers Sea Level Rise Claims
A new study concludes “temperate glacier ice flows more steadily than previously thought, leading to lower projections of sea-level rise” over time. Examining the speed and volume at which various types of ice flow, the team of researchers from Iowa State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison found climate models that project increasing rates of sea level rise do not account for the disparate melting and flow rates of ice.
Neal Iverson, a coauthor of the paper, told SciTechDaily glaciers are composed of or contain within them a number of different types of ice, and these, due to differing pressure, melt at different rates. Most climate research is done on cold, hard ice, with melt and flow rates calculated for the whole glacier based on how that type of ice melts, yet soft-watery ice surrounded by or within meltwater behaves differently, and it often makes up a significant portion of glaciers.
Because warm-soft-ice trapped within glaciers under pressure is hard to study directly, the researchers conducted laboratory experiments in which they used a large walk-in freezer since 2009 with ice under pressure to simulate flow from different types of ice. Geologist Collin Schohn, the lead author of the study, ran a series of six six-week experiments using the modified freezer to measure the ice’s liquid content and how it melted and flowed under deformation from pressure and movement and different temperatures.
The resulting data suggest a standard value within the “empirical foundation of glacier flow modeling”—an equation known as Glen’s flow law, named after the late John W. Glen, a British ice physicist—should be changed for temperate ice, the paper states. The experiments found glacial flow projections based on cold/hard ice using Glen’s flow law—the standard equation serving as the “empirical foundation of glacier flow modeling”—were too high because the standard doesn’t account for the different characteristics and physical behavior of warm-soft ice.
Whereas Glen’s flow law assumes ice melts at a faster rate as pressure and other stressors increase, the new study found warm, soft ice “deformed at a speed that was linearly proportional to the stress,” with no increase in the rate of melt or flow. In fact, for large portions of ice the rate of melt/flow could be three to four times lower than the number used in climate models in which Glen’s flow law is assumed.
When used in the flow law, the new value “will tend to predict increases in flow velocity that are much smaller in response to increased stresses caused by ice sheet shrinkage as the climate warms,” Iverson said. That means the corrected models will show less glacier flow into oceans and project less sea-level rise.
To produce more-accurate projections of future sea level rise, the researchers argue for incorporating a more nuanced understanding of glacial ice and developing improved forecasts of glacier flow and any resulting sea-level rise.
Sources: Science; SciTechDaily
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H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and the managing editor of Environment & Climate News.
