In his first 24 hours in office, US President Donald Trump for a second time repealed the United States’ participation in the Paris Agreement.
The environmental pact binds 196 nations to a goal of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial times.
The only nations outside of it are Iran, Libya and Yemen.
“America will be a manufacturing nation once again, and we have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have, the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we are going to use it,” Trump said in his inauguration speech at the US Capitol on Monday. “We will drill, baby, drill.”
Trump also backed away from the climate deal in his first term, when he campaigned on the theory that climate change was a hoax propagated by China to hamper US economic growth. There have been no such claims in his latest campaign.
Unlike Trump’s 2017 withdrawal, which took four years to become effective, and was reversed by the incoming administration of Joe Biden, this withdrawal will take effect in a year.
Here’s what you should know:
Why is Trump doing it (again)?
Trump recently said that the Paris Agreement would cost the US billions of dollars. He was referring to pledges made by developed economies to give developing economies $100bn in grants, facilitating their transition to renewable energy. The US has also traditionally been against any form of carbon penalty levied on polluting companies, and hasn’t set up a carbon market.
Trump has also consistently supported domestic fossil fuel production as a form of national energy security. He hasn’t explained why he does not see domestically produced renewable energy in the same way.
“The investments that have already been made in fossil gas in the US will ensure that US gas production and exports will roughly double over the next five years,” said Michalis Mathioulakis, the academic director of the think tank Greek Energy Forum in Thessaloniki. “Trump will of course claim credit for that, but you can’t achieve production increases in a short period.
Mathioulakis, as well as many other analysts, believes the US wants to displace Russia as Europe’s principal supplier of fossil gas, because it sees European dependence on Russian gas as a security liability. This also deprives Russia of its most lucrative market, and therefore tax income.
“For sure [the US] is trying to displace Russia in the global market,” said Mathioulakis. “Let’s not forget the lifting of the export embargo on liquefied natural gas (LNG) happened under [former US President Barack] Obama.”
Will it stop the energy transition in the US?
Trump’s first effort to stop decarbonisation of the economy failed.
US Energy Information Administration (EIA) data show that 35,723 megawatts’ worth of coal-fired power plants were retired during Trump’s first term, more than in President Obama’s first six years in office. They were replaced by fossil gas-fired plants, which are less polluting, a trend that started under Obama and continued unabated during Trump’s first term.
“Reversing the momentum of clean energy in the US and globally will not be easy,” said Nikos Mantzaris, founder of The Green Tank, an energy think tank in Athens. “Renewables are by far the cheapest form of energy and in the US, states make their own decisions.”
Solar and wind energy grew during Trump’s first term, and surpassed energy from coal for the first time in US history in December 2020, as Trump prepared to leave office.
That trend is set to continue.
In 2022, then-President Joe Biden passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), offering $270bn in tax credits and other incentives to invest in renewable energy. By August of last year, the IRA had spurred $215bn of investments in solar and wind energy production, and the government had offered homeowners $8bn in tax credits for carrying out energy-saving renovations.
Biden’s stated goal was to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent relative to 2005 by 2030, and by 60 percent in 2035. Biden signed off on a flurry of IRA projects in his last two months in office, and those subsidies will continue to pay out until 2032, four years after Trump leaves office.
The EIA has forecast that most of the increased US electricity consumption in 2025 and 2026 will be provided by solar power.
This is part of a global shift.
The International Energy Agency, a Paris-based intergovernmental organisation and think tank, has forecast that renewables will make up two-thirds of developed economies’ electricity production in 2030.
Mathioulakis also believed Trump’s policies wouldn’t make much of a difference. But there will be a slowdown in the transition to solar and wind energy for other reasons, he told Al Jazeera.
“Wherever we had a rapid development of renewable energy sources, when these reached more than 40 percent of the energy mix, there were problems – namely that we can’t expand on clean energy use without developing electricity storage and flexible grids,” Mathioulakis said. “So there’s been a slowdown. This was going to come to Europe and the US anyway.”
How much carbon does the US pump into the air relative to others?
The US is the world’s second-largest polluter after China, emitting 6 billion tonnes of carbon-equivalent gases in 2023, according to the World Resources Institute. That is about 16 percent of the world’s 37 billion tonnes.
China tops the list, at more than twice US emissions. The European Union and India follow the US at about 3.4 billion tonnes each.
How are other nations reacting?
China’s Foreign Ministry said it was “concerned” at the US withdrawal.
“Climate change is a common challenge facing all of humanity. No country can stay out of it,” said a statement from the foreign ministry in Beijing.
The EU climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, called it “a truly unfortunate development”.
Does this expose US goods to carbon taxes in the EU?
The European Commission that has just assumed office is supposed to seriously consider imposing a carbon tax on goods imported from countries that do not have a carbon market like the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS).
The ETS sells carbon credits to polluters, giving them an incentive to switch to cleaner forms of energy.
The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is meant to even the playing field for European energy companies and manufacturers competing with countries that don’t impose costs for polluting.
If Trump makes good on a threat to impose tariffs on European exports to the US, that will make enforcement of the CBAM against the US much more likely.
