Donald Trump’s campaign promises heralded an environmental uproar. The first year of his term in the White House did not disappoint. Act I: destabilise the countries that signed the Paris Agreement on the climate. This was done as early as 1 June 2017, with the announcement of the withdrawal of the United States.
Act II: scatter the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the four winds. On this ground, what is happening is unprecedented. Even Ronald Reagan, hardly renowned for his regulatory inclinations, had not dared to attack in this way an institution created by President Nixon in 1970. The appointment of Scott Pruitt to head the Agency opened the way to a thorough dismantling. To begin with, the man made no mention of climate change during the presentation of his plan to the EPA teams. Then the Agency’s executives were subjected to pressure, documented on a website created for the occasion.
Budget cut to pieces, censorship of the website
Next, the agency’s budget was cut to pieces. As for its website, partly purged of articles on climate change, it displays missing pages and broken links… the better to reflect the Agency’s priorities, under the leadership of President Trump and his administrator Scott Pruitt. “Last but not least”, a programme to subject the work of climate science to systematic criticism was launched by this new-formula EPA.
President Trump’s energy policy is of the same stripe. Last January, his administration confirmed the launch of a massive offshore oil-exploration plan, under the banner of an “America first offshore energy strategy”. The Atlantic and Pacific oceans are targeted, as well as the Arctic Ocean (and Alaska). The latter had long remained untouched territory. The United States thus intends to reassert their energy “superpower” , to use the word of Ryan Zinke, a Montana representative who became Donald Trump’s Secretary of the Interior.
Bloomberg and Gore to the rescue
Also in the sights: the national parks. The Trump administration decided to trim their boundaries, in order to free up spaces for gas and oil exploration. (reduced by 85%) and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (cut by 40%).
The Trump presidency has therefore tipped the United States into an unknown dimension… All the way to Europe, at the annual climate conference (COP23), held in Bonn in November 2017. At the heart of the official pavilion, a “US” delegation had come to defend the idea that “fossil fuels will be part of our near future, so it is in everyone’s interest that they be clean and efficient”.
Not far from there, a “pool” of celebrities gathered under a marquee set up for the occasion. Among them, former Vice-President Al Gore as well as former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. A figure in the fight against climate change, the latter pointed out that “promoting coal at a climate summit was like promoting tobacco at a cancer congress”.
Like Gore and Bloomberg, part of the American business world has also decided to go on the offensive on the question of the climate and energy. As early as June 2017, several captains of industry had publicly voiced their disapproval of the Trump administration’s decision: General Electric, IBM, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Cargill, among others. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and Robert Iger, CEO of The Walt Disney Company, for their part slammed the door of Donald Trump’s economic council.
Americans sensitive to the effects of warming
As for Americans… According to a study by Yale University (2016), 74% of them want schools to teach the causes, consequences and potential solutions to climate disruption. American states and cities are not to be outdone. The US Climate Alliance brings together 17 states — of all political stripes — that have decided to pursue the energy transition. Among them, Rhode Island, New York, California, Colorado, Minnesota, Virginia, etc. The Alliance affirms that it will meet the greenhouse-gas emission-reduction targets for the year 2025.
points out, for its part, that more than 100 cities in the world draw at least 70% of their electricity from a renewable energy source. And that…: Aspen, Eugene, Seattle, as well as the city of Burlington (Vermont), which claims 100% renewable electricity.
But beyond posturing or magnifying effects, the figures show that the United States remains a heavyweight player in fossil fuels. In 2017, US coal exports thus rose again, notably because of sustained Chinese demand.
The United States becomes an oil exporter again
The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) has just published one on energy production and consumption in the United States through to 2050. Nuanced throughout, its projections establish a reference scenario in which the powerful nation becomes a heavyweight in renewable energy… while becoming a major oil power again.
The EIA forecasts that in the very short term, US crude-oil production will exceed the record set in 1970 — 9.6 million barrels per day — and then continue to rise over the coming years. Under the combined effect of a reduction in demand and an increase in production, the United States could even become a net oil exporter from 2029 to 2045.
The “Wall Street Journal” points out the irony of the situation, which proves the very conservative Sarah Palin right. In 2008, facing the Obama team in the presidential race, she launched the famous slogan “Drill, baby, drill!”.
Renewables, the leading source of electricity production?
At the same time, and this is welcome, the share of renewable energy in electricity production is set to grow strongly. Until now produced mainly from oil and natural gas, this is taking on a renewable tint.
In the reference scenario, in the very short term, the share of renewables overtakes that of nuclear-based electricity around 2020. Then that from coal-fired power plants, in the mid-2030s. In an ambitious scenario, renewable energy overtakes nuclear before 2020, natural gas a few years later, and coal in the 2030s, thus becoming the leading source of electrical energy.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the United States ultimately remains the second most dynamic market in the world for renewable energy, solar photovoltaics and onshore wind in particular.
Politically, things are moving, even in the Republican camp. James Baker, former Treasury Secretary under Ronald Reagan and Secretary of State under George Bush senior, is campaigning for the adoption of a carbon tax. Around twenty groups of young Republicans On the front of the climate and renewable energy, a generational rift seems to be taking shape in the United States.