The first day of any presidential administration is filled with both ceremony and bureaucracy. The first day of the second Trump Administration was no different.

In his first several hours as president, President Trump began reshaping the government through dozens of executive orders (EO). We summarize the initial orders and memoranda — many of them anticipated — impacting the energy and environmental spaces.

Revoking Prior Executive Orders

Upon taking office, presidents use executive orders to shape their Administration and announce policy preferences. However, policies made by executive order are often overturned by subsequent Administrations. When the first Trump Administration took office, we analogized executive order-based policies to the straw houses constructed in the “Three Little Pigs” children’s story.

Continuing recent practice, President Trump immediately issued an executive order disavowing many Biden Administration executive orders. Revoked orders in the energy and environmental space include:

• Executive Order 13985 of January 20, 2021 (Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government). (A discussion of work relying on EO 13985 is here.)
• Executive Order 13990 of January 20, 2021 (Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis).
• Executive Order 14008 of January 27, 2021 (Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad). (Grants under the Justice40 Programs established under EO 14008 are discussed here.)
• Executive Order 14027 of May 7, 2021 (Establishment of the Climate Change Support Office).
• Executive Order 14037 of August 5, 2021 (Strengthening American Leadership in Clean Cars and Trucks).
• Executive Order 14052 of November 15, 2021 (Implementation of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act).
• Executive Order 14057 of December 8, 2021 (Catalyzing Clean Energy Industries and Jobs through Federal Sustainability).
• Executive Order 14082 of September 15, 2022 (Implementation of the Energy and Infrastructure Provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022).
• Executive Order 14091 of February 16, 2023 (Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government).
• Executive Order 14094 of April 6, 2023 (Modernizing Regulatory Review). (Guidance issued under EO 14094 is discussed here.)
• Executive Order 14096 of April 21, 2023 (Revitalizing Our Nation’s Commitment to Environmental Justice for All).
• The Presidential Memorandum of January 6, 2025 (Withdrawal of Certain Areas of the Outer Continental Shelf from Oil or Natural Gas Leasing).

Regulatory Freeze

President Trump issued a “Regulatory Freeze Pending Review” for all rules forwarded to the Federal Register for publication and made available for inspection but not yet published or effective. This action was expected. However, it may not be effective because the Administrative Procedure Act can require use of notice-and-comment rulemaking to undo rules that have been published but are not yet effective. (For more, see here.)

Government Structure

President Trump restored his first Administration’s policy to reclassify 10s of thousands of federal civil service positions in “policy-influencing” roles as at-will employees. The policy, formerly known as “Schedule F” and now called “Schedule Policy/Career,” aims to make it easier for the Trump Administration to replace certain employees with Trump-aligned workers. Under a Biden Administration rule, individual employees whose positions are reclassified may challenge that change before the federal Merit System Protection Board. The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents 150,000 federal employees, sued on Monday to block the order.

In other government employee news, the White House announced a hiring freeze for executive branch agencies other than the military and asked the director of the Office of Management and Budget to prepare a plan to “reduce the size of the Federal Government’s workforce through efficiency improvements and attrition.” One factor that may drive attrition is a newly announced policy encouraging a return to in-person work with agencies directed to “as soon as practicable, take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis.”

Climate

In his second inaugural address, President Trump promised to “drill, baby, drill.” To that end, the president signed an executive order, “Unleashing American Energy,” to set the federal government’s new energy policy.

The order announces a new policy to promote fossil fuel production, including on federal lands and in federal waters, aid critical mineral production, end federal support for electric vehicles, and calculate the domestic impacts of regulations without considering climate change effects to other countries. The order instructs federal agencies to review their programs, regulations, and actions to align with these policy goals.

The order revokes numerous Biden Administration orders and programs related to climate and the environment. Among these, it restarts approvals for liquified natural gas export terminals, terminates the American Climate Corps, and ends the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases. The new Administration may also relax energy efficiency standards for motor vehicles and household appliances. (Conservative groups have long opposed energy efficiency requirements.)

The order instructs the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to consider eliminating the social cost of carbon from federal consideration. It also commands EPA to consider whether to revise or revoke the Obama EPA’s endangerment finding that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare under the Clean Air Act. Public interest groups and others may challenge this action as inconsistent with the US Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. EPA.

In a separate order, Trump withdrew the United States from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, including the Paris Agreement. He also terminated the US International Climate Finance Plan.

Energy Development

A major plank of President Trump’s platform was to encourage development of fossil fuel resources. The United States currently produces more crude oil than any nation and is expected to produce more in 2025 than in 2024. President Trump’s orders aiming to rescind the Biden Administration’s renewable energy policies and promote fossil fuel development include the following:

• Promoting fossil fuel development. The “Unleashing American Energy” order requires federal agencies to review activities that “impose an undue burden” on the development of domestic energy resources, specifically “natural gas, coal, hydropower, biofuels, critical mineral, and nuclear energy resources.” Agencies must develop action plans within the next 30 days to address rules that potentially limit these resources.
• Pausing disbursement of funds under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The “Unleashing American Energy” order instructs all agencies to “immediately pause disbursement of funds” appropriated through the IRA and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Specifically, the order highlights funds for electric vehicle charging stations through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program and the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Grant Program. Within 90 days, all agency heads must review grant, loan, and contract policies to align with the new energy policy.

The order leaves unresolved significant questions regarding countless ongoing projects, and whether funding will be available as expected. In the next 90 days, we expect to see significant lobbying by business, state elected officials, and members of US Congress to preserve projects funded or expecting funding to preserve the status of projects in their jurisdictions. 

• Speeding up project permitting. “Unleashing American Energy” addresses permitting with a goal of speeding up projects. The order instructs the Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to propose rescinding the current CEQ regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and to work with agencies to revise their NEPA regulations. The impact of these changes depends on what revisions or replacement regulations, if any, the new Administration adopts. The order also advises agency heads to use all possible authority, including emergency authority, to expedite projects essential to national security. The Administration will submit a permitting reform proposal to Congress.
• Fostering domestic development of critical minerals. “Unleashing American Energy” instructs agencies to identify and then revise or rescind regulations that impose an undue burden on domestic mining of critical minerals. The order instructs the director of the US Geological Survey to consider listing uranium as a critical mineral.
• Declaring a National Energy Emergency. The “Declaring a National Energy Emergency” executive order cites the need to reduce energy costs as a rationale for promoting oil and natural gas production. In particular, the order requires the heads of federal agencies and executive departments to “identify and exercise any lawful emergency authorities available to them, as well as all other lawful authorities they may possess” to facilitate and expedite the identification, leasing, siting, production, transportation, refining, and generation of domestic energy resources, including on federal lands. It also calls for review of “obstacles to domestic energy infrastructure” from environmental protections like the Endangered Species Act or the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
• Halting wind development. A memorandum titled “Temporary Withdrawal of All Areas on the Outer Continental Shelf from Offshore Wind Leasing and Review of the Federal Government’s Leasing and Permitting Practices for Wind Projects” temporarily bans leasing any area of the Outer Continental Shelf for offshore wind development. The memorandum does not affect rights under existing leases, but the US Secretary of the Interior, in consultation with the Attorney General, is instructed to identify any legal basis for modifying these rights. The Secretary of Interior is also instructed to assess the environmental impact of onshore and offshore wind development (including on birds and mammals), the economic costs of intermittent electricity generation, and the effect of subsidies on wind industry viability. The Secretary of Interior, the US Secretary of Energy, and the Administrator of the EPA are also instructed to assess the environmental impact and cost of defunct and idle windmills and to review all federal wind leasing and permitting practices.
• Promoting Alaskan energy development. Finally, “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential” revokes restrictions on drilling and extraction and expedites the permitting and leasing of energy and natural resource projects in Alaska. The order particularly prioritizes the development of Alaskan liquified natural gas.

Environmental Justice

President Trump took aim at the Biden Administration’s environmental justice (EJ) policies. Starting with the now-repealed Executive Order 13985, the Biden Administration used a “whole of government” approach to address EJ issues. In EO 13985’s words, these issues resulted in “[e]ntrenched disparities in our laws and public policies” that have “denied … equal opportunity to individuals and communities” and that could be addressed by a “comprehensive approach” by the federal government to impact communities that are “underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality.”

The Biden Administration’s efforts to address EJ issues were controversial with disputes ranging from already constructed projects being denied operating permits in Chicago, Louisiana’s so-far successful attack on EPA’s use of civil rights authorities, and whether and to what extent race and nonenvironmental impacts should affect environmental permitting.

The Trump Administration had been expected to curtail EPA’s focus on EJ. Under the banner of “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” an executive order declared that the “Biden Administration forced illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) into virtually all aspects of the Federal Government.” This order directs agencies to “take immediate steps to end Federal implementation of unlawful and radical DEI ideology.”

The order directs federal agencies to, among other actions, terminate “to the maximum extent allowed by law” all DEI and EJ offices and positions. It also instructs agencies to tally past DEI and EJ expenses and to identify federal contractors and grantees who provided DEI work. While future efforts to rollback Biden era EJ initiatives are expected, the focus on EJ by many states is expected to continue.

California Water Infrastructure

Citing both ongoing wildfires in Southern California and also efforts conducted during the first Trump Administration, in a memorandum addressed to the Secretaries of the Interior and Commerce entitled “Putting People over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California,” the president directed the Secretaries of Commerce and Interior to study and report back in 90 days on ways “to route more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to other parts of the state for use by the people there who desperately need a reliable water supply.”