If carbon regulations restrict how much a company can pollute where it’s located, it could move operations (and jobs) to another country – with no reduction in emissions.
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As Trump explores warmer ties to Russia, he'd be wise to brush up on the history of past resets and the role the oil industry played in each one. The results weren’t good.
Trump promises to revive the coal industry in part by opening up mining on federal lands, yet economists found that increasing royalties on public land would lead to more mining elsewhere, including Northern Appalachia and the Illinois Basin.
AP Photo/Steve Helber
One of Trump's first orders of business on energy will likely be to reopen federal lands to coal mining, which would be a bad deal for taxpayers and the environment.
Obama has prioritized development of wind and solar in a number of ways, including installation on military bases.
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
The Trump administration has the tools to slow the momentum Obama started on clean energy. Countering Trump are global market forces and state-level action.
U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke campaigns for reelection in Billings, Montana, October 20, 2016.
AP Photo/Matthew Brown
If US Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana is confirmed as interior secretary, he will face difficult choices about balancing extractive activities like energy production with conservation on public lands.
In 1945, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, part of a behind-the-scenes policy to ensure access to oil for the U.S. and its allies.
National Archives and Records Administration
Big Oil has historically played a behind-the-scenes role on American policy and politics. No longer.
A political sign in West Virginia reflects the claim that the Obama administration, by developing policies to reduce carbon emission, was waging a campaign against the industry.
Vicki Smith/AP Photo
President Obama used an obscure 1953 law to bar offshore drilling in Arctic Alaska and along the Atlantic coast. Republicans and energy companies want to reverse the ban, but it will not be easy.
Uncertainty around government policy affects how businesses operate and whether they’ll invest in R&D.
Pixabay
Economists have shown, using both theory and data, that uncertainty about U.S. environmental policies makes clean tech innovation less likely.
The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration supervises the removal of 68 kilograms of highly enriched uranium (enough for two nuclear weapons) from the Czech Republic in 2013.
NNSA/Flickr
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry has experience with energy, but if confirmed as secretary of energy, he should get ready to learn a lot about DOE's big jobs: nuclear security and basic science research.
The incoming EPA will likely lean toward less oversight over state public health programs – and lax enforcement is one of the causes behind the Flint water crisis.
Rebecca Cook/Reuters
The hostility of Scott Pruitt, Trump's nominee to head the EPA, toward climate change rules is well-known. But his anti-regulatory stance could easily set back years of work on environmental justice.
Gatherers in Cannon Ball, North Dakota celebrate news that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers won’t grant an easement for the Dakota Access oil pipeline.
AP Photo/David Goldman
The protesters have scored a big victory in the Dakota Access Pipeline conflict, but it's served only to illuminate the sharp divisions over energy policy in the US.
The 'war on coal' is not really a result of onerous regulations but a combination of market forces over which a Trump administration has limited control.
Trump’s energy plan will be fossil fuels on steroids combined with efforts to roll back limits on greenhouse gases.
AP Photo/Eric Gay
President-elect Trump's objective on energy and climate is clear: Undo Obama's legacy of environmental regulations and massively expand fossil fuel production.
Stacks at the Nucor Steel plant – one of the types of manufacturing sites that would be affected by a carbon tax – in front of the Space Needle in Seattle.
AP Photo/Elaine Thompson
Will government policy to promote clean energy be disastrous or a boon? A close look at the 2009 stimulus, which plowed $90 billion into energy, can tell us a lot.
Soybeans and corn are two of the most widely planted crops in the United States and the main feedstocks used to make biofuels.
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A new study challenges the longstanding view that biofuels are carbon-neutral, and asserts that in the U.S. to date, they have done more harm to the climate than gasoline.
Yes, climate change came up during the debate but there was little substantive discussion of energy or environment.
Rick Wilking/Reuters
Trump is following in Ronald Reagan's footsteps by pushing against regulations, but in the 1980s, it only awakened the public to environmental concerns.
