OPINION:
Congressional Democrats have really, truly and finally had it with President Trump.
If the prosecutions, investigations and decade of smears and attacks didn’t prove it, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island has made clear that Mr. Trump crossed a line when he halted work on renewable energy projects. In protest last month, the senator cut off permitting reform legislation negotiations with the administration. That’ll show him.
This move is not only cutting off the Democrats’ nose to spite their face (a permitting reform bill would limit Mr. Trump’s ability to do exactly what is infuriating Mr. Whitehouse), but it also doesn’t reflect reality. Despite what you may have heard, Mr. Trump has been great for green energy.
In fact, the president’s record on all energy is sterling. U.S. crude oil production and natural gas production have hit record highs — a stunning reversal from “peak oil” fears of just a decade ago. Mr. Trump ordered major reforms of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to speed up the deployment of nuclear energy. His administration has even aggressively attempted to secure new sources for the critical minerals necessary for renewable technology, which it recognizes as a part of its energy dominance agenda.
This brings up perhaps the biggest energy surprise of the past year: Solar energy production has increased during the Trump administration.
Yes, you heard that right. Media have labeled Mr. Trump an enemy of renewable energy for signing legislation that removed subsidies for solar and wind power. Yet refusing to subsidize does not mean refusing to support. The Trump administration is instead doing what it can to let the market and national security imperatives decide energy policy instead of having the government pick winners and losers.
The confusion over Mr. Trump’s approach to energy arises because, for years, the political left has tried to deceive America by coding certain renewable technologies as “left wing,” forcing them into the partisan fray. Mr. Trump has never bought into left-wing framing on anything. Instead, he is choosing whatever it takes to help America win on energy.
The United States is already the No. 1 producer of fossil fuels, but we’re second in the world in renewable energy production, significantly behind our rival communist China, which has already realized benefits from its aggressive investments (subsidized by slave labor) in this burgeoning field.
If we want to outpace China in energy production over the long term, then we must beat it in renewable energy just like we beat it in oil and gas.
The president knows we can do that without Democratic-designed government subsidies, which didn’t work in the first place. Remember, under the Biden administration, renewable energy projects sat in limbo while taxpayers were forced to fork over $7.5 billion to build 37 electric vehicle charging stations.
Of the Biden clean energy projects that were actually built, 80% ended up in Republican congressional districts — a sign not only that blue states just don’t build anymore but also that Republican-style deregulation is a key to energy success.
Subsidies or not, the Republican green energy boom reveals that a winning strategy relies on dramatically speeding up the permitting process for all energy projects, just as Mr. Trump has already started to do.
This full-scale energy deregulation agenda is already strengthening our economy and fighting inflation. If the left were honest, it would acknowledge that the Trump energy dominance agenda is also the best thing to happen to environmental policy in a long time.
Take, for example, the president and the Supreme Court reining in the National Environmental Policy Act, a primary producer of Washington environmental red tape. Reforming the act might elicit gasps from fringy environmentalists, but they should be cheering. Over the past 50 years, NEPA has become such a hindrance to building that it has actually held back more renewable energy projects than oil or gas projects.
Reforming NEPA will finally free renewable projects from the ironic death sentence of environmental litigation. Republicans were completely right to put subsidies for electric vehicles and certain intermittent energy sources on the chopping block, but that doesn’t make Mr. Trump and his allies enemies of renewables. Instead, the Republican deregulatory agenda supports energy projects of every kind without the need for government dollars.
When it comes to energy, Mr. Trump deserves credit for once again breaking the tired partisan narratives that rule in Washington. He knows technologies are neither left-wing nor right-wing. Like the businessman he is, President Trump is simply in favor of what works.
• Chris Johnson is president and co-founder of the American Energy Leadership Institute, a conservative energy policy research and advocacy organization working to ensure America leads and dominates the 21st century.
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