Column: Trump Tripping Over Energy Ignorance

My column is now running in the Midland Daily News, and the Mt Pleasant Morning Sun – pretty good coverage of key Central Michigan area.

Peter Sinclair in the Midland Daily News:

Prior to the 2024 election, President Donald Trump vowed to slash energy and electricity prices in half in the first 12 months of hos second term.

But in his first month back in office, the Trump administration’s energy policies have been chaotic and contradictory.

The simple minded “Drill Baby Drill” slogan presupposed that with Trump back in power, drillers could shrug off woke snowflake regulations, rip into wild lands and open a floodgate of new oil and gas, dropping prices.

In reality, according the Wall Street Journal, the oil barons who bankrolled the Republican campaign are not interested in opening the spigots.

According to the Journal, the oil magnates worry their stocks would be “absolutely crushed” if production were to grow the way Trump hopes. Not only that, the Journal also reported that “production in most U.S. crude regions is set to decline as fields mature and sweet spots dwindle.”

An Exxon official told the Journal, “We’re not going to have the explosive growth that we’ve seen.”

Trump won’t get help from his friends in Saudi Arabia, either.

The Arab dictatorship keeps the peace domestically with big social spending and actually needs a higher price to meet that demand.

As evidence grows that global gasoline demand is peaking, oil billionaires hope the administration will help them by “shoring up” shaky demand, and “locking in fossil fuel use” with new pipelines and export terminals, while dampening growth of competition,like wind, solar energy and battery storage — keeping US consumers hostage to the vagaries of global markets.

Those global markets have become a threat to American consumers in recent years.

With the appointment of fracking millionaire Chris Wright as his Secretary of Energy, there is a clear intention to ramp up exports of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG).

Fossil gas exports were not allowed prior to 2016, but have grown so much that the US has become the world’s leading exporter.

But a new Department of Energy study points out that increasing gas exports will raise prices for American consumers, as well as increasing greenhouse gas emissions. According to the report, increasing LNG exports will bring higher residential gas prices, higher electricity prices, and higher prices for goods, as manufacturers pass those costs through.
High school economics explains why. With global markets wide open, Americans are now competing with other countries who are willing to pay double or triple our domestic price.

Meanwhile, Trump’s threats of tariffs against Canada and Mexico have domestic auto manufacturers terrified. Last week, Ford CEO Jim Farley stated that those tariffs “will blow a hole in the U.S. industry that we have never seen,” and lead to mass layoffs at US plants. The tariffs, Farley explained, whether implemented or merely threatened, are causing “chaos” across the industry.

America’s auto giants are facing an existential threat from cheap, high quality Chinese EVs, which are rapidly gaining market share in developing markets across the world, reaching 76% of global sales in  October.

The EV transition is unstoppable globally. US automakers know they will not survive if they do not compete.

If, as the Administration claims, we are in an “Energy Emergency,” then there is one obvious way forward. We need renewable energy more than ever.

The Financial Times reports that in the US, the time frame for building new solar is 1-4 years, (onshore wind is similar) while the latest nuclear plant to be completed, Georgia’s Vogtle plant, took 15 years. With renewables, unlike fossil gas, fuel costs are completely predictable (zero) and not dependent on global markets.

John Ketchum, CEO of Nextera, which is the largest US operator of gas generation, and one of the largest in nuclear, recently admitted, “renewables can be delivered right now, they can accommodate that (surging data center/AI) demand today… and gas fired generation announced today, won’t be ready until 2030 or beyond, and nuclear beyond that because a lot of it is first-of-a-kind technology.”

That’s why in 2024, more than 90 percent of new electrical capacity was solar, wind, or battery storage, with only 5 percent coming from fossil gas.

Solar and wind remain the cheapest sources of new generation, hands down, full stop, even without subsidies — and the proof is, markets are choosing them.

Peter Sinclair is a Midland resident and internationally-recognized videographer who studies climate change and renewable energy issues.