Trump vows to reduce energy costs with his latest cabinet picks

“With U.S. Energy Dominance, we will drive down Inflation, win the A.l. arms race with China (and others), and expand American Diplomatic Power to end Wars all across the World.”

With his latest cabinet nominations, President-elect Donald Trump promised to bring down the cost Americans pay for energy by expanding oil and gas production.

Trump named North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum as secretary of the Interior as well as chairman of “the newly formed, and very important, National Energy Council.”

“As Chairman of the National Energy Council, Doug will have a seat on the National Security Council,” Trump said in a statement. “As Secretary of the Interior, Doug will be a key leader in ushering in a new ‘Golden Age of American Prosperity’ and World Peace. ‘

“We will ’DRILL BABY DRILL,’ expand ALL forms of Energy production to grow our Economy, and create good-paying jobs,” he added. “By smartly utilizing our amazing National Assets, we will preserve and protect our most beautiful places, AND reduce our deficits and our debt!”

Trump said the new energy council will involve all parts of the federal government dealing with energy.

“This Council will oversee the path to U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE by cutting red tape, enhancing private sector investments across all sectors of the Economy, and by focusing on INNOVATION over longstanding, but totally unnecessary, regulation,” Trump said. “With U.S. Energy Dominance, we will drive down Inflation, win the A.l. arms race with China (and others), and expand American Diplomatic Power to end Wars all across the World.”

As part of his Burgum pick and his nomination of fracking entrepreneur Chris Wright to lead the Department of Energy, Trump promised to get energy prices down.

“We will also undo the damage done by the Democrats to our Nation’s Electrical Grid, by dramatically increasing baseload power,” Trump said.

Trump also named William Owen Scharf as assistant to the President and White House Staff Secretary.

So far, Trump has pointed to the loyalty of his choices, saying how they endorsed him or helped him win reelection when announcing them as his choices.

“Will is a highly skilled attorney who will be a crucial part of my White House team. He has played a key role in defeating the Election Interference and Lawfare waged against me, including by winning the Historic Immunity Decision in the Supreme Court.”

Trump followed his electoral win with a flurry of cabinet picks, some expected and some that are sure to stir things up.

In particular, Trump’s picks of Robert F Kennedy Jr to lead the Department of Health and Human services, veteran and Fox News host Pete Hegseth to lead the Secretary of Defense, and former Congressman Matt Gaetz to lead the Department of Justice have sparked headlines.

More picks are on the way as Trump has to fill out positions across the federal government.

Whether Trump can get the Senate to confirm his nominees, especially the more controversial picks, remains to be seen.

Trump’s list of nominees so far include:

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum as Secretary of the Interior.
William Owen Scharf as Assistant to the President and White House Staff Secretary.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of U.S. Health and Human Services
Former Congresswoman and veteran Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence.
Former Congressman Doug Collins as Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Jay Clayton as Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Former congressman Matt Gaetz for Attorney General.
Veteran and Fox News host Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense.
Veteran and former New York congressman Lee Zeldin as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., as Secretary of State.
Former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan as “border czar.”
Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Former Congresswoman and current governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the “Department of Government Efficiency.
William Joseph McGinley as White House Counsel.
Steven C. Witkoff as Special Envoy to the Middle East.
Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla. as national security advisor.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y. as ambassador to the U.N.
Dean John Sauer as Solicitor General.
Todd Blanche as Deputy Attorney General.
Emil Bove as Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General.
Dan Scavino of the Trump campaign as Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff.
Susie Wiles, co-chair of the Trump campaign, as White House Chief of Staff.
Stephen Miller as Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor.
James Blair of the Trump campaign as Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Legislative, Political and Public Affairs.
Taylor Budowich of the Trump campaign as Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications and Personnel.

Casey Harper

D.C. Bureau Reporter

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OPEC Delivers Masterful Rebuke To Global Energy Agency Head

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Next federal government should close widening gap between Canadian and U.S. energy policy

Energy

OPEC Delivers Masterful Rebuke To Global Energy Agency Head

Published on March 16, 2025

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

Some readers will remember the infamous May 2021 report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) titled ‘Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector.’ The report projected a roadmap for transforming the world’s $300 trillion oil-and-coal-based energy system into one that runs on unreliable, intermittent alternatives like wind and solar.

Most educated observers viewed the report as a piece of propaganda coming from an agency then in the process of transforming itself from a historically reliable source of real data and analysis into just another advocate for the climate alarm narrative. It surprised no one when, just a few years later, Fatih Birol, head of the IEA, publicly boasted about that exact transformation as being the agency’s overt mission now.

One passage in the report’s set of recommendations immediately caught everyone’s eye due to its boldness and transparent illogic. That passage says, “There is no need for investment in new fossil fuel supply in our net zero pathway.”

To reinforce this stunningly absurd notion, Birol, in an interview published by the Guardian upon the study’s release, insisted that, ”If governments are serious about the climate crisis, there can be no new investments in oil, gas and coal, from now – from this year.”

It was a moment when the formerly respected agency shed a great deal of its credibility.

Making matters worse for Birol and IEA, barely a month later a spokesperson for the IEA urged OPEC to “open the spigots” to raise oil production to meet rising global demand that was outstripping the agency’s forecasts as the world recovered from the COVID-19 insanity. Three months after that, Wood MacKenzie, Rystad, and Moody’s had all issued studies directly contradicting IEA’s absurd assessment, and Birol was joining former President Joe Biden in calling for U.S. oil producers to drill more wells and produce more oil.

This sort of ill-advised posturing and self-contradiction is what happens when a scholarly enterprise consciously lurches into advocacy.

At this past week’s CERAWeek conference in Houston, Birol contradicted himself one more time, telling attendees, “I want to make it clear … there would be a need for investment, especially to address the decline in the existing fields. There is a need for oil and gas upstream investments, full stop.”

This latest impulse to respond to the next new thing surely surprised no one. But it was a bridge too far for officials at OPEC to sit by and absorb silently. In a March 13 statement posted on the OPEC website, the cartel reviewed Birol’s and IEA’s recent history of inconsistency and urged Birol to take a step back and consider the impacts it has had and will continue to have on investments for the future.

“Aside from the risk of whiplash that such severe yo-yoing between positions could cause, a serious point needs to be stressed,” OPEC writes. “The world needs unambiguous clarity on the realities of the future of supply and demand. Agencies that recognize the responsibility that comes from offering analysis of the long-term perspectives of the industry should not be shifting positions or mixing messages and narratives every couple of years on this matter, particularly ones that were founded to ensure the security of oil supplies.”

Oof. Blunt, but true. It is a dressing down that is well-deserved and long overdue.

Does Birol’s latest shift signal a recognition that the energy transition for which it has advocated has failed? It’s hard to know.

Regardless, once an agency like IEA makes a public decision to transform itself away from sterile analysis into the realm of advocacy, going back will be hard. Aside from the loss of credibility, which has only increased as Birol has lurched from one position to another and back again, such a transformation completely shifts the organization’s culture. Going back now will require time and a great deal of organizational pain.

Here, another obvious question arises: Is Fatih Birol the right person for this job? It is a question that should have arisen before the loss of so much credibility and trust. For the 32 member countries who subscribe to the agency and pay its bills, there is no time like the present to determine the answer.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

Energy

Next federal government should close widening gap between Canadian and U.S. energy policy

Published on March 15, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Kenneth P. Green

After accounting for backup, energy storage and associated indirect costs—estimated solar power costs skyrocket from US$36 per megawatt hour (MWh) to as high as US$1,548, and wind generation costs increase from US$40 to up to US$504 per MWh.

At a recent energy conference in Houston, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the Trump administration will end the Biden administration’s “irrational, quasi-religious policies on climate change that imposed endless sacrifices on our citizens.” He added that “Natural gas is responsible for 43 per cent of U.S. electricity production,” and beyond the obvious scale and cost problems, there’s “simply no physical way that wind, solar and batteries could replace the myriad uses of natural gas.”

In other words, as a federal election looms, once again the United States is diverging from Canada when it comes to energy policy.

Indeed, wind power is particularly unattractive to Wright because of its “incredibly high prices,” “incredibly huge investment” and “large footprint on the local communities,” which make it unattractive to people living nearby. Globally, Wright observes, “Natural gas currently supplies 25 per cent of raw energy globally, before it is converted into electricity or some other use. Wind and solar only supply about 3 per cent.”

And he’s right. Renewables are likely unable, physically or economically, to replace natural gas power production to meet current or future needs for affordable, abundant and reliable energy.

In a recent study published by the Fraser Institute, for example, we observed that meeting Canada’s predicted electricity demand through 2050 using only wind power (with natural gas discouraged under current Canadian climate policies) would require the construction of approximately 575 wind-power installations, each the size of Quebec’s Seigneurie de Beaupré wind farm, over 25 years. However, with a construction timeline of two years per project, this would equate to 1,150 construction years. This would also require more than one million hectares of land—an area nearly 14.5 times the size of Calgary.

Solar power did not fare much better. According to the study, to meet Canada’s predicted electricity demand through 2050 with solar-power generation would require the construction of 840 solar-power generation stations the size of Alberta’s Travers Solar Project. At a two-year construction time per facility, this adds up to 1,680 construction years to accomplish.

And at what cost? While proponents often claim that wind and solar sources are cheaper than fossil fuels, they ignore the costs of maintaining backup power to counter the unreliability of wind and solar power generation. A recent study published in Energy, a peer-reviewed energy and engineering journal, found that—after accounting for backup, energy storage and associated indirect costs—estimated solar power costs skyrocket from US$36 per megawatt hour (MWh) to as high as US$1,548, and wind generation costs increase from US$40 to up to US$504 per MWh.

The outlook for Canada’s switch to renewables is also dire. TD Bank estimated that replacing existing gas generators with renewables (such as solar and wind) in Ontario could increase average electricity costs by 20 per cent by 2035 (compared to 2021 costs). In Alberta, electricity prices would increase by up to 66 per cent by 2035 compared to a scenario without changes.

Under Canada’s current greenhouse gas (GHG) regulatory regime, natural gas is heavily disfavoured as a potential fuel for electricity production. The Trudeau government’s Clean Electricity Regulations (CER) would begin curtailing the use of natural gas beginning in 2035, leading largely to a cessation of natural gas power generation by 2050. Under CER and Ottawa’s “net-zero 2050” GHG emission framework, Canada will be wedded to a quixotic mission to displace affordable reliable natural gas power-generation with expensive unreliable renewables that are likely unable to meet expected future electricity demand.

With a federal election looming, Canada’s policymakers should pay attention to new U.S. energy policy on natural gas, and pull back from our headlong rush into renewable power. To avoid calamity, the next federal government should scrap the Trudeau-era CER and reconsider the entire “net-zero 2050” agenda.