Energy and climate emerged as prominent issues during President Trump’s first 100 days in office, as the new administration dealt with setbacks on immigration, foreign policy and health care.
Trump took several executive actions to fulfill his campaign promises, from rolling back the Clean Power Plan, to repealing the Stream Protection Rule, to reviewing fuel economy standards, to lifting moratoriums on coal mining and offshore drilling, and more.
One thing President Trump hasn’t done is fill dozens of appointed positions, including deputy secretary and administrator positions in energy and environment agencies. “To implement all of these executive orders, you need manpower to do it, you need leadership in these agencies, you need personnel -- and they don’t have it. So I’m not confident in how fast they’re going to be able to act to implement these things,” said Brandon Hurlbut, partner at Boundary Stone Partners and former chief of staff to Energy Secretary Stephen Chu.
Patrick Currier, partner at S2C Pacific and former senior energy counsel to the House Committee on Energy & Commerce, also believes a lot more work is needed for Trump to realize his policy goals. “These executive orders are talking points and the heart’s in the right spot, but I think we’ll need a little bit more than that, and probably more work on the congressional side,” he said.
I sat down with Democrat and Republican energy policy experts Hurlbut and Currier on Friday to get the insider’s take on Trump’s first 100 days. Listen to the conversation in our latest Facebook Live video recording below.
In this episode we also discuss the implications of Energy Secretary Perry’s baseload power study -- could it justify federal intervention in state-level renewable energy policies? And finally, we talk about the People’s Climate March, which drew around 200,000 participants over the weekend, and how protests do or don’t affect change on energy issues.