In his first 200 days, Trump has overturned Biden climate agenda at breakneck speed, report shows

President Donald Trump had campaigned on promises to undo many of the Biden administration’s climate policies. He called climate change a “hoax,” vowed to stop offshore wind projects, and promised to overturn former President Biden’s electric vehicle mandates. 

Immediately after being sworn into office, Trump went about making good on these campaign promises and more. In 2022, The American Energy Alliance began keeping a tally of all the actions Biden and the Democrats had taken to make it harder to produce oil and gas. Only two years into Biden’s term, the AEA had 125 items on its list. By the time Biden left office, the list had doubled in size. 

On his first day back at the White House, Trump signed dozens of executive orders, including his order “Unleashing American Energy.” The AEA started a new list that tallied up the actions that Trump and Congressional Republicans were taking to unleash America’s energy potential. The first edition, released in March, contained 50 actions. Last week, they updated the list for Trump’s first 200 days in action, and the newest list contains 200 items. 

Faster than Trump's first administration

Alex Stevens, communications director for the Institute for Energy Research, the research arm of the AEA, told Just the News that, while highlighting a stark contrast between the Trump and Biden administration’s energy policies, the list also shows a contrast with the first Trump administration. 

“Some of the things that dragged on for several years, like pulling out of the Paris Agreement during his first term, like that was done day one,” of Trump’s second term, Stevens said. 

The list of anti-energy actions the Biden administration took begins on Jan. 20, 2021, when Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline, issued a moratorium on oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), expanded the use of the social cost of carbon, and revoked many Trump-era actions supportive of oil and gas development. 

The following week, Biden issued an executive order placing a moratorium on new oil and gas leasing on public lands and offshore waters. Biden continued to take actions to stop oil and gas production on federal lands throughout his presidency. In May 2022, he canceled leases in Alaska’s Cook Inlet and canceled a lease sale in the Gulf of America. The following March, he withdrew more areas of Alaska from oil exploration and blocked leases on 23 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. 

A recent analysis by the Energy Policy Research Foundation found that the first Trump administration averaged 1244 onshore oil and gas leases per year in the lower 48 states, but the Biden administration issued only 219 on average per year. 

Under the second Trump administration, the Bureau of Land Management began issuing leases on public lands by Jan. 31.

Executive orders and proposed rulemaking

Besides the “Unleashing American Energy” executive order, Trump also placed a moratorium on offshore wind and new wind and solar permits on federal lands, revoked Biden’s executive orders declaring a “climate crisis,” and withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 Paris Agreement — all on his first day. 

Trump also terminated Biden’s pause on liquified natural gas export permits, and the following month, the Department of Energy approved the first since Biden’s freeze. Several more have been issued since. 

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced in March that the agency would be targeting 31 deregulatory actions. These included a review of many of the Biden-era climate agenda rules, such as the Clean Power Plan 2.0 and the tailpipe emission standards that were a key part of Biden’s EV mandates. By July, the EPA released its proposed repeal of the Obama-era “endangerment finding,” which had been the legal linchpin of the agency’s regulation of emissions from vehicles. 

Congressional Republicans have also been taking action in line with Trump’s “Unleashing American Energy” order. In February, the House passed the “Protecting American Energy Production Act,” which now sits in the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. The bill prohibits the president from banning hydraulic fracturing without Congressional authorization. Also in February, Congress voted to overturn the Biden administration’s methane fee, which charged oil and gas companies progressively higher fees for their excess methane emissions. 

In July Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which placed new restrictions on the production tax credits that have subsidized the renewable energy industry since the 1990s. 

Moving through the process, anticipating obstructionist litigation

Stevens with the Institute for Energy Research noted that many of the items on the list are rulemaking announcements, such as the repeal of the “endangerment finding.” It’s unlikely, he said, that the next 200 days will bring about the same level of activity from the administration. 

Instead, Stevens speculated, the administration will likely begin moving the proposed rules through the rulemaking process, as well as preparing for litigation against the administration’s actions. 

“Things will probably slow down. If you asked me right now to be on there being 200 more actions in the next 200 days, I’d bet against it,” Stevens said.