Better Energy

National Review Online

Wednesday, November 20, 2024

 

Joe Biden had a whole-of-government approach for green energy. Donald Trump is assembling a whole-of-government approach for energy. The omission of that one word makes a big difference.

 

Trump will appoint Chris Wright to be secretary of energy. Wright is the CEO of fracking firm Liberty Energy. He has said, “There is no climate crisis and we are not in the midst of an energy transition either.” Stuff like that comes as a shock to the media and the global environmental movement who can’t stop writing and advocating about those two things, but he’s correct on both counts. Climate change may pose challenges, but they are manageable challenges. And, a true energy transition is a long way off: Currently, green energy is more of an addition to global supply than anything else. It will be a relief to have leadership tethered to reality rather than alarmism and central-planning schemes praised as “ambitious” by our moral superiors.

 

Excepting the pandemic anomaly of 2020, U.S. carbon emissions per capita last year were the lowest they have been since 1939. They were highest in 1973 and have been in steep decline for the past 20 years. This follows a similar pattern in other wealthy countries where continued economic growth — not the “degrowth” some environmentalists want — has coincided with a reduction in per capita emissions.

 

Total U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions peaked in 2005. They have declined as fracking has become widespread and the population has continued to increase. Wright will be attacked as anti-environment, yet by making natural gas more plentiful as a replacement for coal in electricity generation, fracking has helped the environment more than every road-blocking protest and project-blocking lawsuit from the green movement combined.

 

Wright will be part of something Trump is calling the National Energy Council, a cross-department task force to be led by secretary of the interior nominee Doug Burgum. Burgum is the outgoing governor of North Dakota, one of the centers of America’s ongoing energy boom. As a presidential candidate, Burgum never caught on with voters, but he was a voice of calm and competence in an oftentimes shambolic field.

 

North Dakota has been hamstrung by lack of pipeline infrastructure to carry its energy products to market on the Gulf Coast. The Biden administration was slow-walking pipeline approvals, which we hope Burgum will be able to use his new energy leadership role to reverse.

 

As chairman of the National Energy Council, Burgum will also have a seat on the National Security Council. It’s correct to view energy policy as being connected with national security. When, for example, the Biden administration issued its moratorium on new LNG export terminals, it was also harming U.S. national-security efforts to wean Europe off Russian natural gas.

 

The U.S. went from exporting no natural gas as recently as 2016 to becoming the world’s largest exporter. There’s still plenty to do to build out infrastructure and fully capitalize on this relatively recent industrial advance.

 

The National Energy Council will face challenges common to any government task force that includes agencies from multiple departments. Burgum will need to be on guard against letting bureaucratic turf wars harm the administration’s policy goals. The White House should also be cautious to not overly formalize the council’s powers. We don’t want to see a Democratic administration in the future using a council created by Republicans to push even more corporate welfare for green energy or ramp up the progressive fight against functioning household appliances.

 

The U.S. will no doubt continue to develop green energy as well over the next four years, but companies should do so without taxpayer money. The full repeal of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act should be a priority for Republicans. Some energy companies will insist on keeping their handouts. Their cries should be resisted by the administration and Congress.

 

In 2023, Burgum called the IRA the “Inflation Creation Act” and said “it’s wrong on every front.” A lobbyist quoted in Politico said Wright’s appointment signals that the administration will go after the IRA with “a machete rather than a scalpel.” Sounds good to us.