By Anders Lorenzen

As the 47th US President, Donald Trump wasted no time laying out his priorities. Undoing every single piece of now former President Biden’s climate agenda was at the core.

In a series of executive orders, the US will again exit from the Paris Agreement with its notice to the United Nations (UN) being crafted immediately. The government will also remove the funding to UN climate efforts.

And in a series of executive orders targeting Biden’s clean energy strategy, the Trump administration will end new leases to offshore wind farms.

More fossil fuels

The president says he will declare an energy emergency. Still, he might have called it a fossil fuel emergency as he will use all his resources to remove regulations and streamline permitting to build what he says is critical infrastructure and lift Biden restrictions on specific areas for fossil fuel projects such as in the Arctic. In a resurgent speech, he said, “We will drill, baby, drill”. In a big deregulation drive, Trump has pledged to remove regulations that burden energy production and usage, including mining and processing non-fuel minerals.

Responding to these announcements, the Center for Biological Diversity said: “President Trump’s apparent use of the National Emergencies Act to try to increase drilling on public lands and waters comes despite the U.S. being the world’s largest producer and exporter of fracked gas. Domestic oil production hit a record high in 2024, the hottest year in recorded history because of fossil fuel pollution.”

Once the notice to the UN has been filled, it will take a year to exit the Paris Agreement. When Trump left the agreement during his first term, several states and corporations joined an initiative named ‘We Are Still In’ pledging to continue to adhere to what was set out in the agreement that world leaders signed in 2015 in Paris.