Project 2025 (Part 1) - Episode 95

In this first of two parts, Paul takes a deeper dive into the climate implications of the conservative policy playbook, Project 2025. Paul unpacks how the document lays out a vision for a smaller federal government, and how doing so may impact not only climate action but America's leadership across emerging economic industries.

For further reference:

"Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise" - Project 2025

"What Project 2025 would do to climate policy in the US" - Yale Climate Connections

"The Endangerment Finding: What Does It Actually Do?" - Resources.org

"2024 Poll: Americans’ Views on Climate Change and Policy in 12 Charts" - Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago

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Transcript

This is Eight Minutes – a podcast helping you understand the energy and climate challenge in just a few minutes – I’m your host, Paul Schuster.

Okay – so, I’ve been meaning to do this episode for a while. But I’ve been a bit hesitant because I’ve really wanted this show to focus on CLIMATE issues – and avoid some of the partisan politics that can complicate that focus sometimes. But – well, climate IS a political issue and it’s important to be informed, on both sides, as to how administrations could affect investment, regulations and policy.

So – this is the first of two episodes that I’m devoting to really understanding Project 2025’s playbook on what a conservative administration may mean for climate activity. I think it’s no surprise that I lean toward doing MORE, rather than less, so my bias is going to show through – but, in my research here, I’ve actually found a few areas where compromise and collaboration may occur too.

Let’s get into it.

Eight Minutes – it’s how long it takes the sun’s rays to hit earth – or a little longer than it takes to register to vote … no excuses! … let’s get it on!

A University of Chicago poll over the Summer found that 78% of Americans believe in climate change. Which is about where the agreement ends, though, as not everyone concurs on what to do ABOUT it.

Which makes “climate”, broadly speaking, an easy political focal point for the upcoming US Presidential election.

And while 37% of voters indicates that climate is a TOP priority of theirs, climate policy is unlikely to sway undecided voters very much. Yale research found that voters that think climate is an important issue (either for OR against) have ALREADY made up their minds on who they are going to vote for. And while the broad strokes of climate policy are still important for each candidate to lay out, expect that the last few months of this campaign are likely to focus on issues where they can sway additional voters – which means climate may *look* like it’s taking a bit of a back seat during these few months.

That’s hardly the case from a policy perspective, though, and it’s useful to understand where the two parties sit on climate aspirations. Especially as it may relate to a potential reboot of a Trump administration that was fairly hostile to climate activity during his first term.

Project 2025 lays out a really interesting blueprint for how a second term might unfold. If you’re unfamiliar with this document, it’s essentially a conservative roadmap on a whole bunch of issues with discrete actions that can be taken to govern, from day 1, toward these goals. The Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think-tank, partnered with over 350 different entities to generate the document – and it’s getting a lot of attention for it’s approach toward everything from national security to abortion.

And there is a lot in there that covers climate, energy and the environment. Let’s not sugarcoat it – Project 2025 is a gut punch to climate action. An analysis by UK based Carbon Brief estimates that implementing the playbook’s roadmap would lead to an additional 400 billion metric tons of carbon by 2030 – the emissions output of Europe and Japan combined!  

Of initial importance is whether a conservative administration could repeal much of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the IRA or the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill. And The answer is a bit mixed. On the one hand, quite a bit of money has already been distributed from those legislative bills AND the subsidies that HAVE been distributed have supported a huge number of projects in traditionally conservative leaning states. Which suggests that a full repeal of the law may be politically untenable.

But elements are certainly at risk – depending on whether Republicans control both sides of Congress or just the Presidency. If conservatives end up running the table, then it’s quite possible that a future budget bill could eliminate tax incentives for renewable energy, storage, EVs, hydrogen … though I'm willing to bet that advanced manufacturing credits may stay as a lot of jobs have been created in red states supported by those subsidies.

Across the board and across all issues, Project 2025 reimagines a federal government that is smaller with less of an oversight role over certain areas. For environmental issues, that means shifting some of the regulatory structures away from federal agencies and into industry control. Some of the playbook’s recommendations could be implemented through simple executive action on the part of a President Trump, though others would require congressional approval as well.

For instance, the playbook calls for substantially curtailing many of the oversight responsibilities of the Department of the Interior and the EPA, eliminating their abilities to track methane emissions or conduct climate research. The EPA, especially, takes a hit under the document’s blueprint as Project 2025 recommends eliminating the Endangerment Finding from 2009 that found that greenhouse gases are a danger to the public – and, as such, should be regulated. The conservative roadmap would eliminate that legal structure, removing the EPA from any oversight and pushing that control back to private industry.

Gone would be offices established from the IIJA such as the Office of Clean Energy Demonstration (OCED) or the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Office, the Loan Program Office (LPO) and ARPA-E – the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy. The LPO and ARPA-E both play a role in helping to finance new, or difficult to finance technologies which just aren’t quite ready for private market investment, yet.

Project 2025 derides the use of governmental funds for those types of technologies, arguing that it amounts to the government picking winners and losers – but both the LPO and ARPA-E play really important roles in new technology development and it’s frankly a miss on the Project 2025 authors’ parts to think that private capital can solve everything. Industries that even conservatives like such as hydrogen or modular nuclear *need* early funding to prove out the technology, develop the supply chain infrastructure, and see long duration construction through to the end. Private capital can’t take on those risks – but government CAN and should. Otherwise, the US ends up ceding those industries to countries that DO invest behind advanced technologies. Such as China – which already holds over 50% of the hydrogen electrolyzer market and is poised to take advantage of a huge burgeoning marketplace.

The hostility toward acknowledging climate change, at all, is apparent throughout the document. It calls for eliminating efforts that the Biden Administration has installed to assess the social cost of carbon, it advocates for eliminating science based research on climate change. The Office of Science would be refocused to work on defense applications – avoiding climate talk altogether.

Project 2025 also advocates for shifting power grid planning authority to the States and eliminating the Grid Deployment Office (GDO). This holds to their philosophy to shift more power to individual states rather than a federal administration – and holds to a general theme in the document that renewable energy is somehow over subsidized and should be reduced. The GDO was created as part of the infrastructure bill to help ease the friction of CROSS-STATE transmission lines – presumably to help renewable power make its way from windy and sunny spots to cities where the power demand is higher. So, from a conservative perspective, eliminating the GDO makes superficial sense.

What the policy doesn’t address is the other side of the equation – not just looking at renewable SUPPLY, but what about increasing power DEMAND? For instance, for increased data center needs related to AI and cloud computing? Without a central planning office for transmission, how are states expected to deal with the expected surge of power needs in their area? IntERstate lines are necessary – and without them, we handcuff growth in another burgeoning industry such as AI – which could cede leadership in an incredibly important and burgeoning industry to our Asian competitors. 

Project 2025, generally, talks a lot about limiting the economic power of geopolitical rivals – so it’s interesting that some of their energy proposals may have the opposite effect.

In its zeal to reduce the bureaucratic nature of the federal administration, Project 2025 glosses over a lot of the knock on effects that such actions could have. Imagine what Elon Musk did to Twitter happening to the federal government – and the ramifications it has on economic planning, catastrophe planning and crisis response. 

For instance, it calls for eliminating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as well as the National Weather Service. Both entities currently do a lot of research into the impacts and growing hazards of climate change which Project 2025 finds as wasteful spending. What doesn’t seem to be well thought out, though, is how important that weather data is for activities such as tracking hurricanes and forecasting weather catastrophes.

And the reality is that eliminating whole agencies and whole programs like this – well, it’s not like the NEXT administration could simply turn a switch and bring the lights back on. Once gone, they’re pretty much gone. Which may be a good result for conservatives looking to reduce federal spending and shift the balance of power to states and industry, but could be devastating for a climate issue that needs SYSTEMIC action and not just piece meal efforts. 

Next week, I’ll dig a bit more into other suggestions laid out in Project 2025, including refocusing FERC, the EIA … and even reimagining the math on the cost of power. 

Stay tuned.

I’m Paul Schuster – and this has been your eight minutes.