Trump’s new energy policy kills electric vehicle credits, paves the way for old light bulbs and high-flow toilets

America is one of the world the largest energy exporters. In terms of energy production and distribution, it is a super power. To hear President Trump say, the United States is weak. So weak is declared a “National Energy Emergency” and is “Unleashing American energy,” in a pair of executive orders that will have far-reaching consequences for how the nation does business.

The short version is that Trump has undone everything Biden has done and doubled down on a right-wing meme first uttered by Sarah Palin in 2008: “Drill baby drill.”

The first thing both orders do is tell a story about the world we live in. To hear Trump say, America is attacked on all sides by hostile actors and in urgent need of resources. The blameless Biden has hindered American energy independence and hurt the common man. “In an effort to harm the American people, hostile foreign state and non-state actors have targeted our domestic energy infrastructure, weaponized our dependence on foreign energy, and abused its ability to cause dramatic swings in markets international raw materials”, the “National Emergency”. ” order said.

While it is true that America’s adversaries abroad often target its energy infrastructure, they are not alone. There is no mention in the Order of the several times in recent years that white supremacists they tried to take out part of the country’s electrical grid.

“The policies of the previous administration have led our Nation into a national emergency, where a precariously inadequate and intermittent energy supply, and an increasingly unreliable grid, require swift and decisive action,” the order said. “Without immediate remedy, this situation will deteriorate dramatically in the near future due to high demand for energy and natural resources to power the next generation of technology. The ability of the United States to remain at the forefront of technological innovation” .

Translation: my new friends at Meta and Amazon are building data centers that require a tremendous amount of energy to run and need all the help they can get. Big Tech is gone all in nuclearit’s true, but nuclear power takes a long time to get going. In the short term, companies like Microsoft and Meta need a large amount of traditional spitting smoke sources to keep their services alive. Trump’s orders make it a little easier.

The rest of the “National Energy Emergency” order gives broad “emergency” powers to various government officials with the nebulous goal of increasing America’s energy independence and tapping its vast natural resources. The real meat of Trump’s energy policy is in the “Unleashing American Energy” order.

Like the “National Emergency” order, the “Unleashing American Energy” order is loaded with right-wing whining. “In recent years, burdensome and ideologically motivated regulations have hindered the development of these resources, limited the generation of reliable and affordable electricity, reduced job creation, and inflicted high energy costs on our citizens,” he said. .

The order then promises to undo the damage of the past and restore American prosperity “including for those men and women who have been forgotten by our economy in recent years. It also rebuilds the economic and military security of our Nation , who will give peace through strength.”

The list of incoming changes that the order will enact is long. Here are some of the highlights.

In principle, the order outlines the plan to “eliminate the ‘electric vehicle (EV) mandate'” and promote true consumer choice. Tesla and Elon Musk have made a lot of money on electric vehicle tax credits, but that revenue stream will soon end and Musk’s vehicle company will have to compete on a more level playing field.

Part of the scheme will be “terminating, where appropriate, state emissions waivers that function to limit the sale of gasoline automobiles; and considering the elimination of unfair subsidies and other ill-conceived government-imposed market distortions that they favor EVs over other technologies and effectively mandate their purchase by individuals, private businesses and government entities, making other types of vehicles unaffordable.”

The next line promises to allow Americans free choice when it comes to a number of consumer goods including light bulbs, washing machines, gas stoves and toilets. This has long been a specific complaint of Trump. It is often talked about how toilets today are not as good as they used to be.

A ban against incandescent light bulbs hit the US in 2023, forcing everyone to use widely hated LEDs. The order doesn’t say Trump will bring back the old bulbs specifically, but that’s probably what he’s talking about here. And, of course, the order says that Americans will be free to continue using gas stoves. There was a panic among conservative America during the Biden administration for the proposed legislation in some states that would gradually phase out gas stoves in favor of electric ones.

The new order listed 12 Biden-era executive orders being revoked, including strengthening the nation’s forests, communities and local economies, protecting public health and the environment, and restoring science to address the climate crisis, and reconstruction and strengthening programs to resettle refugees and Planning for the impact of climate change on migration.

The new order also eliminated the US Climate Change Corps. Established in 2023, the American Climate Corps was an interagency enterprise that would train young people in climate and energy jobs that would help America. It’s not just off the ground, but the dream was to have young people help install solar panels, work with the US Forest Service to fight fires, and other similar activities.

He is gone now, slain in his crib.

The order also directs government agencies to stop paying attention to “the social cost of carbon,“One way of thinking about climate change that study the damage made by a single ton of carbon emissions. “The calculation of the ‘social cost of carbon’ is marked by logical deficiencies, a poor basis in empirical science, politics, and the absence of a foundation in legislation,” said the order. “Their abuse arbitrarily slows down regulatory decisions and, by making the U.S. economy uncompetitive internationally, encourages greater human impact on the environment by offering less efficient foreign energy producers a greater share large part of the global market for energy and natural resources”.

Government agencies have 60 days to remove the social cost of carbon from any of their decision-making processes.

And, of course, the order destroys what remains of the Green New Deal. “All agencies immediately suspend the provision of funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (Public Law 117-169) or the Infrastructure Investment and Employment Act (Public Law 117-58) , including, but not limited to, funds for electric vehicle charging stations available through the National Formula Program the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure and the Charging and Power Infrastructure Discretionary Grant Program, and will review its processes, policies and programs for the issuance of grants, loans, contracts, or any other financial disbursements of such appropriate funds for the consistency with the law and policy outlined in section 2 of this order,” he said. .

Trump and his team seem to really hate electric vehicles.

There is more to both orders, much more. These are just the highlights that give us a broad idea of ​​how America’s energy future will play out. It seems all the old fossil fuels are in, government-backed economic incentives are out, and America will soon be free from the tyranny of low-flush toilets. The consequences are damned.