What to expect from Trump’s Day 1 orders on climate and energy

President-elect Donald Trump’s attack on the Biden administration’s climate agenda begins in three days.

How much survives the initial assault is still unclear. But Trump has made it clear that a purge is coming.

On his first day, Trump could sign somewhere between 50 and 100 executive orders, with more expected over the following weeks, said Stephen Moore, who served as Trump’s senior economic adviser on the campaign. A first target will be rolling back the climate-focused executive order that President Joe Biden signed a few days into his term, he said.

“I do anticipate many of them will be energy focused, because a lot of what Biden did was through executive order on energy,” Moore said. “So a lot of them would be rescinding things like the EV mandate and some of the environmental rules will be softened and some of the funding of the green energy programs will be lifted.”

The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment.

Executive orders can be just as much a political message as they are an actual policy. Biden used an early flurry of executive orders to reorient the White House around addressing climate change — and to make it clear that boosting the clean energy industry and cutting carbon emissions would be among his top priorities in office.

Executive orders cannot change a law or regulation, but it seems likely that Trump will attempt to do so anyway, said David Hayes, who served as a senior climate adviser in the Biden White House and helped draft climate-related executive orders. Some of Trump’s initial executive orders may overstep their legal authority and get immediately bogged down in court, he said.

“The President doesn’t have the authority to essentially ignore the legally required process that typically is involved in a major change in direction for an agency under its congressionally authorized and mandated mission,” Hayes said.

Some of the forthcoming executive orders will become legislative priorities for the GOP-controlled Congress. Others may not survive the different battling constituencies that make up Trump’s new governing coalition, particularly since Republicans have only a razor-thin advantage in the House.

One early point of tension is Trump’s desire to repeal the entirety of the Inflation Reduction Act — a move opposed by both oil companies and at least 18 Republican members of the House.

On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to be a “dictator” on Day 1 when it came to oil and gas production. The executive orders that he begins to roll out next week will be the first step in that process, but they’re still largely “symbolic,” said Frank Maisano, a senior principal at Bracewell.

“All of these environmental and energy executive orders are going to be symbolic in nature or agenda setting,” Maisano said. “The details, the specifics, the process, will all have to be undertaken to implement.”

Here are some of the expected…