President Donald Trump declared a national energy emergency as part of a wave of executive actions on his first day in office. The order cited high energy prices as a reason the country needed to boost oil and gas production. But energy experts say there’s no such crisis—and that ramping up fossil fuels while curtailing other resources like wind power will actually hurt America’s energy landscape.
Oil and gas production is already at record-high levels in the United States. Even as President Biden championed renewable energy sources, he presided over a record fossil fuel boom. The U.S. produces more oil than any other country in the world—and has been doing so for several years. In recent years, the U.S. has also become the largest exporter of liquified natural gas, meaning the country is producing so much gas that we’re shipping huge amounts of it to European and Asian countries. Domestic gas prices are lower now than they were a few years ago, as are wholesale electricity prices.
This all points to the lack of an energy emergency, says Tyler Norris, who previously served as a special adviser at the Energy Department in the Obama administration and is now a fellow and Ph.D. student at Duke University. And Trump’s declaration of such an emergency is “unprecedented,” he adds. “We’ve never had a president declare a national energy emergency even through the course of all the fuel shortages of the 1970s,” he says. “It’s unprecedented and really represents an egregious misuse of presidential power, primarily designed to accelerate fossil fuels.”
We need a diverse energy mix
That’s not to say our energy landscape is without challenges. One major issue is that the demand for electricity is growing. There are new manufacturing facilities spurred by the Inflation Reduction Act, more data centers fueled energy-hungry AI, and the electrification of everything from transportation to heating systems. Much of the country’s electric grid is outdated, and the U.S. needs new, and more, transmission lines in order to increase capacity and handle additional power.
But ramping up fossil fuels won’t solve those issues. And Trump’s orders reveal contradictions to his claim of an emergency. “If you’re declaring a national energy emergency, presumably you’re attempting to find and maximize available resources wherever possible,” Norris says. But instead, Trump is specifically excluding wind, solar, and battery power from the list of “energy resources” he says we need to increase. Trump also announced orders to halt offshore wind leases and called for the U.S. to export more liquified natural gas—more inconsistencies if the U.S. truly needs to increase its own energy sources.
The key to meeting our growing demand for energy is a diverse mix of resources. “The absolutely last thing you want to do in that sort of environment is be taking potential resource options off the table,” Norris says. “Especially ones that are the fastest growing resources in the country. That right now is solar, wind, and battery.”
The risk of ramping up fossil fuels
Trump’s executive order appears to use emergency powers to promote specific energy sources—namely fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal. This isn’t surprising; Trump has been outspoken about wanting to promote the fossil fuel industry, even pressing oil executives to donate to his campaign in exchange for favorable treatment. But it’s dangerous for the country—not only because fossil fuels are directly tied to greenhouse gas pollution that’s causing dire climate impacts. Limiting our energy mix also puts Americans even more at risk to volatile price hikes.
Oil and gas prices aren’t tied to U.S. production; they’re set globally. That means international events can and will disrupt the market and send prices soaring, like after Russia invaded Ukraine. (Increasing LNG exports has also been linked to rising domestic gas prices.) If we focus too much on oil and gas now instead of diversifying our energy landscape, we’ll be at risk when those prices rise.
This has happened before: When gas prices dipped in 2010, multiple nuclear power plants went offline because they couldn’t compete. That then hurt Americans in the future when oil and gas prices rose, because the plants that could have supported the energy load and offset some costs weren’t available.
It’s an example of a “crowding out” effect, Norris says, where cheap oil and gas limit investments into alternative energies. “When prices spike—which they inevitably do, even if it’s because of an international event that we have no control over—our consumers are left paying the bill,” he says. “If we don’t continue on this course of diversifying our energy supply, it ultimately leaves us more susceptible to price shocks.”
What the country lacks—and what Trump is not addressing—is a national strategy to expand both our sources of electricity generation, and the infrastructure needed for the grid to meet a growing energy load. “You can’t do that just by producing more oil, gas, or coal,” Norris says. “We need to invest in new types of resource options, including offshore wind. We need to be investing in advanced nuclear. And of course, we need to be deploying the resources that are most readily available and scalable right now, which are solar, wind and battery storage.”
