(The Center Square) − Jim Burke, an energy businessman said at the Tulane Future Energy Forum, says one of the lessons learned from the Obama and Trump administrations is that markets matter more to the energy industry than policy.
Burke is the founder of Vista and a board member of the Nuclear Energy Institute.
“During the Obama administration, U.S. oil production rose from about 5 million barrels a day to 12 million,” Burke said. “That wasn’t because President Obama or Energy Secretary Ernie Moniz wanted it – if anything, they were surprised and even a little disappointed.”
In his 2015 state of the union address, Obama called global warming the greatest threat facing the world. Accordingly, the administration made several efforts to help the U.S. energy industry transition from fossil fuels to clean energy.
During his two terms, President Barack Obama made clean energy a centerpiece of his agenda, pairing economic recovery with climate policy. His 2009 stimulus package steered more than $90 billion into renewable energy, efficiency upgrades, and new technologies, while creating ARPA-E to fund cutting-edge energy research.
Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy is an agency within the Department of Energy.
Obama also moved aggressively on power plant emissions. His administration introduced the Clean Power Plan, the first federal rules to cut carbon from existing plants, targeting a 32% reduction in power-sector emissions by 2030. The plan ended up being repealed by the first Trump administration.
Since 2009, the amount of barrels of oil produced each day has increased approximately 160%, according to data from the Energy Information Administration. Natural gas production also exploded during the same time frame.
“If you remember, Trump said he was going to save the U.S. coal business, and U.S. coal production went down 20% in four years,” Burke continued. “The lesson in both of those cases, in my mind, is that markets matter more than than policy.”
When Donald Trump entered office in 2017, one of his signature energy promises was to revive America’s struggling coal industry. He quickly moved to roll back Obama-era regulations that he argued were “killing coal,” which had sought to limit carbon emissions from power plants, and the Stream Protection Rule, which restricted coal mining near waterways.
Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency also eased mercury pollution limits and replaced the Clean Power Plan with the Affordable Clean Energy rule, designed to give states more leeway in regulating coal plants.
But coal never bounced back.
A June report from the Congressional Research Service noted that demand for U.S. coal has weakened for a mix of reasons, none of which include regulatory burden. According to the report, utilities increasingly turned to natural gas after prices dropped in 2008, while renewable energy became cheaper and more widely adopted. Coal plants also faced rising regulatory costs and an aging fleet, and until 2021, export demand for U.S. coal remained relatively low.
The report said, “Executive actions favorable to the coal industry in the first Trump Administration did not reverse coal power plant retirements, increase employment in the coal sector, or increase coal production. It remains to be seen whether actions taken by the second Trump administration and the 119th Congress will impact coal power plant retirements and U.S. coal production.”
