Why Carbon Emissions Will Fall Under Trump
In his first week back in office, President Trump removed the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord, ended restrictions on LNG exports, and bolstered the hydrocarbon industry in Alaska and nationally. Predictably, this has led left-of-center environmentalists to decry an existential climate emergency.
When the Elon Musk-led so called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is added to the mix, the concern grows that legislative incentives and funding bills like the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) or Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act (IIJA) will be clawed back or rescinded. The upshot of all of this, according to the fearmongers, is that we are doomed to years of climate regression.
I predict the opposite. I believe that by 2030, the impact of this administration will be less carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases. The simple reason: innovation.
Historical context only underscores why this is likely. While CO2 emissions grew in the U.S. for a century, they peaked in 2005-2007 and for the last two decades have been on the decline. This conspicuous timing aligns not with a grand climate commitment but the revolution in hydraulic fracturing and the increased share of natural gas in the energy mix.
President Trump’s plan to unleash oil and gas does not equate to greater emissions. The story of the 21st Century to date has been more efficient energy resources displacing less efficient ones. That has meant natural gas replacing coal – and with it, cutting respective energy emissions in half. A good amount of bad policy has also ensured coal’s demise, but the market spoke decisively alongside it to bring about the present reality.
How can cutting government regulation and red tape reduce emissions? The conventional wisdom is that economic growth must in some sense be tied to emissions. After all, more output implies more factories churning out widgets and more industrial centers puffing through their smokestacks.
Revisiting the 2005 to today, we can correlate a few items. The 2000 Census reflected a U.S. resident population of 281,421,906. By 2020, this became 331,449,281. Since 2020, the population has undoubtedly even increased. Despite this nearly 20% increase in population, the annual CO2 emissions fell by 20%. Serving this larger population with new power, water, internet, and roadways was more efficient over time, not necessitating greater emissions.
What about DOGE and cutting red tape? Surely that will lead to dirtier air and water so say the critics. They claim that untethering the economic engine from government controls would be a recipe for emissions and pollutants. To start, the same period that saw CO2 emissions decline by 20% saw GDP rise from $13 trillion to exceed $25 trillion by 2022 – a 92% increase. It simply is not the case that larger population and more dynamic economy equates to higher emissions. Through American innovation, we observe the opposite.
But if DOGE cuts red tape that was present during those years, how can we be assured emissions will not rise and the atmosphere become polluted. The answer is two-fold: first is simply that businesses have already made capital-intensive investments in compliance with those rules. The technology and assets already in place are clean, efficient, and powerful, they won’t be abandoned because the regulations go away.
The second answer involves the nature of regulation. A favorite type of regulation for the environmental wing is ironically the very type of regulation that stifles innovation, restricts progress, and locks in inefficiency. Those are prescriptive regulations – a kind of rule, law, or incentive that details a practice, procedure, or even technology that must be used to achieve a given outcome.
An energy-environmental example illustrates this well: to incentivize carbon dioxide removal, the government created the 45Q tax credit. Under the guise of being performance based, it incentivizes carbon capture technology to sequester CO2 – allowing measurable decreases in the greenhouse gas to be rewarded. But this performance-in-name-only incentive dulls innovation – it focuses exclusively on carbon dioxide gas and ignores any other way to decarbonize.
As an outside-the-box innovative example, companies are currently employing technology to fully decarbonize natural gas at its point of use and without generating carbon dioxide emissions. In fact, one process pulls the carbon (C) off the methane molecule (CH4) leaving only clean hydrogen (H) and solid carbon (C) that is collected like a powder. The so-called performance-based tax credit never conceived that this was possible and failed to incentivize a more efficient process. One that yields two valuable co-products: clean hydrogen for power and industrial use and solid carbon to serve as a construction material to build and improve American infrastructure.
If the outcome of Trump’s administration and the efforts of DOGE lead to more universal performance regulation across the administrative state and removal of prescriptive rules, the outcome would be greater innovation. That innovation would directly lead to greater safety, efficiency, and resilience of our nation’s infrastructure, supply chains, and industry. Part and parcel with that would be a reduction in emissions.
So, with great optimism for the new administration, I confidently predict not only greater energy abundance and infrastructure resilience, but continued reduction in carbon emissions. The United States, through its greatest asset – its people – will unveil new innovative technology, practices, and procedures that enhance the safety, efficiency, and resilience of every industry, leading to a cleaner and healthier America.
Benjamin Dierker is the executive director of the Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure (Aii), the only nationwide public policy think tank dedicated to infrastructure.
