trump in front of image of planet

Molly Butler/Media Matters 

Research/Study Research/Study

Trump's climate and energy executive orders are Project 2025 approved and then some

The president’s decision to declare a national energy emergency goes further than anything in the Mandate for Leadership

Special Programs Climate & Energy

Written by Ilana Berger

Published

During President Donald Trump’s first days in office, the barrage of climate change and energy-related executive orders he issued reflects — and in some cases goes beyond — the plans laid out in Project 2025, despite the president’s past attempts to distance himself from the extreme right-wing policy framework. 

The executive orders pave the way for unfettered and unnecessary oil and gas exploration and development, which is a gift to fossil fuel executives and an existential threat to public health and safety — and which was endorsed in Project 2025’s 900-page policy book Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise. The orders represent the start of what will surely be the hasty abandonment of most efforts to mitigate toxic pollution and planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, develop cleaner technologies, and improve our electric grid. 

They also come as experts have highlighted how extreme drought and heat fueled the recent devastating — and unseasonal — fires in Los Angeles, where residents and first responders are now dealing with toxic ash, flooding, and mudflows as well.

Trump has also given figures involved in the Heritage Foundation-led Project 2025 powerful positions in his new administration. 

  • Some directives in Trump’s executive orders pull directly from Project 2025

    • Trump paused the disbursement of funding from the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, both of which Project 2025 encouraged repealing. In his executive order Unleashing American Energy, Trump writes, “All agencies shall immediately pause the disbursement of funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (Public Law 117-169) or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.” Project 2025 encouraged efforts to repeal “massive spending bills like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)” and rescind “all funds not already spent by these programs.” Trump also gave Project 2025 author Russ Vought, his newly nominated director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, discretion over disbursements of the money. [Whitehouse.gov, 1/20/25; Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023]
       
    • Trump’s executive order expanding resource exploitation in Alaska and the Arctic was proposed in Project 2025. Trump’s former director of the Bureau of Land Management, William Perry Pendley, wrote in Mandate that the administration should ensure “that the United States does not forgo important energy and national security interests in the Arctic … including rare earths, oil, and natural gas.” He also directed the administration “to establish a competitive leasing and development program” in the fragile Arctic National Wildfire Refuge. In an executive order called “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential,” Trump highlighted the need to “expedite the permitting and leasing of energy and natural resource projects in Alaska” and to “initiate additional leasing through the Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Leasing Program, and issue all permits, right-of-way permits, and easements necessary for the exploration, development, and production of oil and gas from leases within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.” [Whitehouse.gov, 1/20/25; Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023] 
       
    • Trump adopted Project 2025’s suggestion to end the Biden administration’s nonbinding goal of making 50% of vehicle sales zero emissions by 2030. In Mandate, Perry Pendley urged the next president to “end federal mandates and subsidies of electric vehicles.” Using similar language, Trump issued an executive order to end “the electric vehicle (EV) mandate.” According to AP News, “The order also seeks to terminate a federal exemption that allows California to phase out the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035.” The order calls for considering an end to EV subsidies, and Trump is also expected to eliminate “a $7,500 tax credit for buyers of EVs … along with federal support for vehicle-charging stations and low interest loans for traditional automakers building new plants to build EVs and the batteries they need.” [Whitehouse.gov, 1/20/25; CNN, 1/22/25; AP News, 1/21/25; The Guardian, 1/20/25; Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023]
       
    • Trump issued orders saying the U.S. would “prioritize the development” of liquid natural gas in Alaska and “restart reviews of applications for approvals of liquified natural gas export projects as expeditiously as possible,” as suggested by Project 2025 author Bernard McNamee. McNamee urged the next president to “eliminate political and climate-change interference in DOE approvals of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports.” The order is an attempt to reverse Biden’s pause on permits to build new LNG terminals that would export energy to non-free trade agreement countries. In December, the Biden administration’s Department of Energy released a study that found exporting more LNG would likely raise energy prices for Americans. According to The Guardian, Trump’s order “should allow up to 14 planned terminals to go ahead, taking US gas around the world, primarily to Asia.” [Whitehouse.gov, 1/20/25; 1/20/25; The Guardian, 1/22/25, 12/17/24; Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023; E&E News, 9/17/24]
       
    • Trump withdrew from the Paris climate agreement once again. The author of Mandate’s section on the Department of Treasury wrote: “The next conservative Administration should withdraw the U.S. from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement.” [Whitehouse.gov, 1/20/25; Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023]

  • Other climate-focused executive orders reflect Project 2025 more generally

    • Trump gave his Environmental Protection Agency administrator the power to delegitimize the “legality and continuing applicability” of the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. This idea, often called “the endangerment finding,” was established by a 2007 Supreme Court case and 2009 legal decision, which gave the EPA the authority to regulate six different greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act because they are dangerous to human health. The author of Project 2025’s chapter on the EPA, former Trump EPA official Mandy Gunasekara, wants to “establish a system, with an appropriate deadline, to update the 2009 endangerment finding.” According to The New York Times, revoking this ability “would not just end climate regulations, but would also make sure no future administration could ever curb dangerous emissions from fossil fuels.” [Whitehouse.gov, 1/20/25; The New York Times, 1/21/25; Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023]
       
    • Parroting Project 2025’s renunciation of environmental justice, one executive order repeals an environmental justice directive that asks federal employees to consider the impacts of pollution on low-income communities, tribal communities, and communities of color. While Mandate recommends eliminating the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights entirely, Trump repealed the 1994 order as part of a larger effort to “enforce our longstanding civil-rights laws and to combat illegal private-sector DEI preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities.” [Whitehouse.gov, 1/20/25; Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023; EPA.gov, 2/16/24]
       
    • Trump issued an executive order pausing leasing for offshore wind projects in federal waters, aligning with Project 2025’s recommendation that the next president should “oppose eyesore windmills built at taxpayer expense.” [Whitehouse.gov, 1/20/25; Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023]
       
    • Trump waded into Project 2025’s call to “eliminate energy efficiency standards for appliances.” He issued an executive order to “safeguard the American people’s freedom to choose from a variety of goods and appliances, including but not limited to lightbulbs, dishwashers, washing machines, gas stoves, water heaters, toilets, and shower heads.” Though there are no details yet, this may mean exempting certain products from requirements intended to reduce energy usage, which Trump did during his first term but Biden undid. [Whitehouse.gov, 1/20/25; PBS, 1/22/25; The Hill, 1/13/22; Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023]

  • Trump’s “national energy emergency” goes beyond the scope of what is laid out in Project 2025 (and counters reality)

    • While Biden was hesitant to use his executive powers to declare a climate emergency during his term, Trump declared a national energy emergency immediately. While Biden considered declaring a climate emergency in 2022, he ultimately decided against it. Even so, right-wing media attacked his deliberation alone as supposedly “thoroughly anti-democratic”  and “agenda-driven.” According to the nonpartisan organization Protect Democracy, “Upon declaring a national emergency, over 130 special authorities … are immediately unlocked that enable a president to intervene in ways that are unavailable to them outside of an emergency declaration.” Trump’s declaration gave him the authority to direct heads of federal agencies to explore ways to boost the “production and sale of a wide range of energy resources” and “to expedite the completion of all authorized and appropriated infrastructure, energy, environmental and natural resources projects.” [E&E News, 8/10/23; Whitehouse.gov, 1/20/25; Fox News, Outnumbered, 7/19/22; Fox News, Fox & Friends, 7/19/22; Protect Democracy, 7/17/24; S&P Global, 1/22/25]
       
    • There is no “energy emergency.” The U.S. is producing “more crude oil than any country, ever.” In August 2024, the U.S. broke records by producing 13.4 million barrels of oil daily. The U.S. is also the world’s largest liquified natural gas exporter. [U.S. Energy Information Administration, 11/26/24, 3/11/24, 4/1/24] 
       
    • The declaration adds to Project 2025’s extreme vision of how a conservative president could leverage their power to push an anti-science agenda. Though authors of the plan made several statements about reinstating “Trump-era Energy Dominance,” ending “the Biden Administration’s unprovoked war on fossil fuels,” and restoring “America’s energy independence,” none offered this specific method of achieving these goals. Notably, there is bipartisan support for a bill to give Congress the power to extend an emergency declaration after a 30-day expiration, a change to the current arrangement in which the president can make an emergency declaration that has no expiration date. The Heritage Foundation itself has disavowed what it has called the abuse of emergency powers by presidents in both parties. [The Heritage Foundation, 6/20/23; House.gov, 6/29/23; Protect Democracy, 6/14/23; Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023]

  • The executive orders come as climate change-driven extreme weather continues to plague the West Coast

    • The two largest LA fires, Palisades and Eaton, have collectively burned over 37,400 acres of Los Angeles County. Several neighborhoods are still under evacuation warnings or orders in LA County, at least 28 people have died, and over 16,000 structures have been damaged or destroyed. [Reuters, 1/27/25; Los Angeles Times, updated 1/27/25; Cal Fire, accessed 1/27/25]
       
    • Wildfires are unusual in Southern California in January. The recent spate of fires suggests that they are becoming more frequent and harder to predict. Meteorologist and climate journalist Eric Holthaus noted that the fires are “exceedingly rare for southern California at any time of the year, let alone January, in what is typically the middle of the rainy season — weeks later (or earlier) in the calendar year than other historical major wildfires have occurred.” He added that the fires are a “watershed moment” that will be “emblematic of a new era of complex, compound climate disaster.” [The Guardian, 1/9/25]
       
    • Attribution studies have shown that climate change has increased the severity or likelihood of extreme heat, drought, and wildfires on the West Coast. According to Carbon Brief, “Attribution studies calculate whether, and by how much, climate change affected the intensity, frequency or impact of extremes.” In one  2023 study, California researchers found that “nearly all of the observed increase in BA [burned area] over the past half-century is attributable to” human-caused climate change. [Carbon Brief, 11/18/24; The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 6/12/23]