Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Politics

What the Oil and Gas Industry Expects from Trump

On rumors from fossil fuel insiders, the LA wind forecast, and Davos

What the Oil and Gas Industry Expects from Trump
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Severe thunderstorms brought transportation chaos to Sydney and left 120,000 homes without power • Greece may resort to filling hotel pools with seawater instead of fresh water due to extreme drought • A clipper storm will bring some snow to the Great Lakes and parts of Appalachia today and tomorrow.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Strong winds continue to fan LA fires

Winds in fire-ravaged Los Angeles were weaker than expected yesterday, but are forecast to pick up again today as firefighters continue to battle ongoing blazes. The National Weather Service issued another “particularly dangerous situation” warning indicating extreme red flag fire weather in large parts of LA until 3 p.m. Wednesday. The Palisades fire is just 18% contained, and the Eaton fire is 35% contained. Some 88,000 people are under evacuation orders, and the death toll has reached 25. Conditions are expected to ease tomorrow, but another round of Santa Ana winds could emerge next week, the NWS said.

National Weather Service

2. Trump planning executive orders on energy

Lobbyists for the oil and gas industry widely believe President-elect Donald Trump will issue a suite of executive orders targeting energy policy shortly after his inauguration. According toThe Wall Street Journal, Trump is expected to “instruct agencies to begin unwinding President Biden’s limits on drilling offshore and on federal land.” Other moves to watch for include:

  • Rolling back tailpipe emissions rules
  • Resuming approvals for natural gas export facilities
  • Transforming agencies including the EPA, and the departments of energy and the interior
  • Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement
  • Creating a new national energy council
  • Declaring a national energy emergency in order to fast-track permits for new energy projects
  • And of course, a ban on offshore wind turbine activity, which Heatmap’s Jael Holzman reported yesterday

Trump’s team has apparently discussed his plans with energy industry insiders, but these are not set in stone. “Energy clearly was on the ballot, and we’re going to make the case that energy won,” Mike Sommers, president of the American Petroleum Institute, told the Journal.

3. Trump DOE nominee Chris Wright to face Senate confirmation hearing

President-elect Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Energy, Chris Wright, is scheduled for his Senate confirmation hearing today at 10 a.m. EST. He will face questions from the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Democrats had asked the panel’s chairman, Republican Sen. Mike Lee, to postpone the hearing due to missing paperwork from the Office of Government Ethics that includes financial disclosures. Lee postponed the hearing for Trump’s pick for interior secretary, Doug Burgum, for a similar reason. Wright is currently the CEO for fracking powerhouse Liberty Energy. The Sierra Club called him a “climate denier who has profited off of polluting our communities and endangering our health and future.”

4. Extreme weather ranks 2nd on list of global risks for 2025

The World Economic Forum put out its annual report of global risks ahead of next week’s summit in Davos. Extreme weather events, which were at the top of the list last year, moved down a notch into the second position, below armed conflict. Twenty-three percent of the 900 or so expert respondents ranked state-based armed conflict as the number one risk facing the globe in 2025, whereas 14% chose extreme weather events:

WEF

Last year, 66% of respondents ranked extreme weather as the top risk, and 53% chose AI-generated misinformation. Looking ahead over the next 10 years, the climate crisis looms very large: Experts ranked extreme weather events, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, critical change to Earth systems, and natural resource shortages as the top risks facing the globe through 2035. The World Economic Forum’s annual meeting runs from January 20 - 25. President-elect Trump is expected to give a virtual address on the 23rd.

5. Nobel laureates call for ‘moonshot’ solutions to global hunger

A group of more than 150 Nobel laureates composed an open letter calling on governments to support the development of “moonshot” innovations to avert a looming hunger crisis. The letter warns some 700 million people are already going hungry, and the problem will only worsen as the population grows. The global food shortage has many causes, but the letter cites climate change as a major challenge and calls for “planet-friendly” technologies to boost food production. “We know that agricultural research and innovation can be a powerful lever, not only for food and nutrition security, but also improved health, livelihoods, and economic development,” said Cary Fowler, joint 2024 World Food Prize Laureate and outgoing U.S. Special Envoy for Global Food Security. “We need to channel our best scientific efforts into reversing our current trajectory, or today’s crisis will become tomorrow’s catastrophe.”

THE KICKER

Global EV sales were up by 25% last year compared to 2023, according to research group Rho Motion. In the U.S. and Canada, sales rose by 9%, compared to a 40% jump in China.

Yellow

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Economy

Trump Is Disabling the Agency That Could Fight China’s Rare Earths Embargo

The Loan Programs Office is good for more than just nuclear funding.

Xi Jinping and Donald Trump.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

That China has a whip hand over the rare earths mining and refining industry is one of the few things Washington can agree on.

That’s why Alex Jacquez, who worked on industrial policy for Joe Biden’s National Economic Council, found it “astounding”when he read in the Washington Post this week that the White House was trying to figure out on the fly what to do about China restricting exports of rare earth metals in response to President Trump’s massive tariffs on the country’s imports.

Keep reading...Show less
Q&A

You, Too, Can Protect Solar Panels Against Hail

A conversation with VDE Americas CEO Brian Grenko.

This week's interview subject.
Heatmap Illustration

This week’s Q&A is about hail. Last week, we explained how and why hail storm damage in Texas may have helped galvanize opposition to renewable energy there. So I decided to reach out to Brian Grenko, CEO of renewables engineering advisory firm VDE Americas, to talk about how developers can make sure their projects are not only resistant to hail but also prevent that sort of pushback.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Hotspots

The Pro-Renewables Crowd Gets Riled Up

And more of the week’s big fights around renewable energy.

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Long Island, New York – We saw the face of the resistance to the war on renewable energy in the Big Apple this week, as protestors rallied in support of offshore wind for a change.

  • Activists came together on Earth Day to protest the Trump administration’s decision to issue a stop work order on Equinor’s Empire Wind project. It’s the most notable rally for offshore wind I’ve seen since September, when wind advocates protested offshore opponents at the Preservation Society of Newport County, Rhode Island.
  • Esther Rosario, executive director of Climate Jobs New York, told me the rally was intended to focus on the jobs that will be impacted by halting construction and that about a hundred people were at the rally – “a good half of them” union members or representing their unions.
  • “I think it’s important that the elected officials that are in both the area and at the federal level understand the humans behind what it means to issue a stop-work order,” she said.

2. Elsewhere on Long Island – The city of Glen Cove is on the verge of being the next New York City-area community with a battery storage ban, discussing this week whether to ban BESS for at least one year amid fire fears.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow