“Make America Energy Insecure Again” Trump’s Energy Policy Would Roll Back Progress on US Energy Independence

Most Americans don’t spend much time thinking about the energy that powers their homes and vehicles. At the end of the day, people want their lights to turn on, their cars to start up, and their household costs to stay low. That’s why, when asked about their priorities for the energy sector, most Americans list energy security and independence as one of their top concerns. An independent energy sector helps address Americans’ other concerns about keeping energy reliable and affordable.

Over the past three years, the Biden-Harris Administration has put energy independence at the heart of its energy strategy, taking a two-pronged approach that accelerates both clean energy deployment and fossil fuel production, jumpstarting the energy transition while keeping gas prices low for working families.

Through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), and the CHIPS and Science Act, Democrats have advanced common-sense energy policies that ensure reliable, affordable, consistent energy access. But Donald Trump would torpedo the nation’s energy security if reelected this November.

Though the 2024 GOP platform promises to “unleash energy production from all sources,” plans from the Heritage Foundation—a conservative think tank with close ties to Trump and his former administration officials—tell a different story, calling for repealing IRA, BIL, and the CHIPS and Science Act and limiting the US to a future of oil, natural gas, and coal.

A Trump White House would put that platform into practice and harm US energy security in the following ways:

• Trump will reduce the nation’s energy diversity, making energy prices more volatile.
• Trump will stall transmission expansion, weakening the grid’s ability to handle growing electricity demand.
• Trump will undo America’s critical minerals strategy, making us more reliant on China.

Trump will reduce the nation’s energy diversity, making energy prices more volatile.

America’s dominance in fossil fuels is well established. The US produced record levels of oil and natural gas in 2023, making it yet again the global leader in these two resources. The Biden-Harris Administration has further solidified this advantage by approving more oil and gas permits for drilling on public lands than the Trump Administration did during the same period of time.

But a truly strong energy sector is diverse, not just reliant on fossil fuels but also abundant clean energy from a variety of sources. Current US industrial strategy has leveraged federal grants, tax credits, and rebates to boost private investment for domestic production of solar, wind, geothermal, battery storage, and more. With that support, onshore wind and utility-scale solar have become both the fastest-growing and cheapest sources of new electricity production in the United States.

The Heritage Foundation proposes scrapping BIL, CHIPS, and IRA’s crucial, technology-neutral tax credits for producing clean energy (45Y) and investing in clean energy facilities (48E) that have catalyzed the growth of these industries.

Eliminating 45Y and 48E would dramatically reduce the diversity of the US’s energy mix. The Rhodium Group estimates that these two credits will add up to 648 gigawatts of domestically produced, clean capacity to the nation’s energy portfolio by 2035. This would amount to enough added electricity to power the equivalent of 170 million American homes. A diverse portfolio acts as an effective hedge against price spikes. Trump, however, would constrain the nation’s energy mix, narrowly keeping the US reliant on oil and gas and leaving American consumers vulnerable to price volatility and rising costs.

Trump will stall transmission expansion, weakening the grid’s ability to handle growing electricity demand.

The United States relies on its transmission infrastructure to provide Americans with consistent, reliable, and affordable electricity. Without sufficient infrastructure, the grid is vulnerable to overloaded demand or extreme weather events that can result in outages and higher costs. A robust grid is also needed to bring the newest and lowest-cost energy options online, which today happen to come from wind and solar.

Unfortunately, the nation’s transmission infrastructure is woefully inadequate. Part of the reason is age—most transmission lines were built in the 1950s and 1960s and have surpassed their intended life expectancy—and part of that is simply growing electricity demand. The US may need to triple its transmission infrastructure by 2050 in order to keep up.

Building out transmission infrastructure can generate trillions in investments, millions of new jobs, and hundreds of dollars in savings for a household’s annual electric bills. But building that infrastructure is challenging, bureaucratic, and expensive, and on average, the process takes over a decade—if ever successful. As a result, more than 2,000 gigawatts of potential generation and storage—nearly double the nation’s existing utility-scale electricity-generation capacity—are languishing in transmission interconnection queues.

Democrats have responded to this challenge with  “the largest investment in grid infrastructure in history,” including $30 billion in IRA and BIL funding toward new transmission development and grid modernization. Recent policies have also accelerated transmission approval processes and streamlined environmental permitting reviews. All told, these efforts could contribute up to100,000 miles of upgraded transmission lines over the next five years.

Trump, meanwhile, intends to block this progress—threatening US energy security in the process. Project 2025 calls for eliminating the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Grid Deployment Office, the primary entity responsible for IRA and BIL’s transmission investments. This radical playbook also calls for eliminating tools that help fast-track transmission projects in regions of the country that need them most.

Policies that sabotage desperately needed transmission expansion serve strictly to advance a confused, anti-renewables worldview and make Americans more vulnerable to power outages and high costs. 72 percent of Americans support streamlining processes to build interstate power lines, and they understand that failure to act will lead to higher costs, less reliability, and an inability to realize the economic opportunity of new surging industries.

Trump will undo America’s critical minerals strategy, making us more reliant on China.

Critical minerals such as cobalt, lithium, and rare-earth elements are vital to national security and the modern economy. In addition to supporting cell phones and computers, critical minerals are needed for clean energy technologies such as solar panels, wind turbines, and battery storage systems. Today, however, one nation—China—dominates the world’s critical minerals market. It supplies 60 percent and refines 90 percent of all rare-earth elements. This near-monopoly means China could restrict global access to such resources or inflate their prices, underscoring the importance of US policy that break’s China’s stranglehold on this supply chain.

Recent policies have recognized the urgency of securing such minerals and have sought to onshore their mining and processing: The BIL provided $3 billion for refining and recycling critical minerals used in batteries; the IRA created advanced manufacturing subsidies (45X) for domestically produced clean energy technologies, including applicable critical minerals; and the DOE’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) is providing low-cost financing to help companies produce and process critical minerals. In total, these efforts have created high-quality jobs, attracted billions in private sector investment, and given the US greater control over its energy security.

Project 2025 purports to care about the domestic processing of critical minerals. In reality, their policy proposals would exacerbate America’s supply chain vulnerabilities. Project 2025 calls for repealing the BIL and rescinding all funds not already spent, which would strip money from efforts to reuse and recycle critical minerals. Project 2025 would also do away with 45X tax credits, which would make American businesses less competitive with foreign companies. And their proposals to eliminate the LPO would make it harder for American companies to obtain loans.

Such policies would not bolster US energy security. They would only serve to give foreign competitors—namely China—a tighter grip on global supply chains.

Conclusion 

Both Democrats and Republicans claim to support US energy security through all-of-the-above approaches, but their policies tell very different stories. Democrats have ensured reliable and affordable energy supplies by tapping into more of America’s resources in addition to fossil fuels. In contrast, Trump’s policies would dismantle crucial federal investments and tax incentives that have fostered the rise of America’s clean energy industries. Such self-defeating actions would lead to greater price volatility, unmet energy demand, more power disruptions for homes and businesses, and increased reliance on China—ultimately making America less energy secure.