Hours after President Trump took office this past Monday, Jan. 20, he signed a variety of executive orders ranging from immigration and ending birthright citizenship to requiring a full-time return to in-person work for federal employees.

Moreover, President Trump declared a national energy emergency, voicing his support for an expansion of domestic fossil fuel production and a turn away from the green energy emphasis seen in the last administration.

During his campaign, his supporters chanted “drill, baby, drill,” which Trump also quoted in his inauguration speech after taking the oath of office for the second time. Many Americans dealt with high prices on household goods, including gas, and throughout the campaign, Trump pledged to harness domestic energy on American soil to bring down costs.

However, Dr. Charles Sims, a professor specializing in environmental and natural resource economics at The Baker School of Public Policy and Public Affairs, says that more drilling on federal land, which Trump has pushed for, may not make as much of an impact on domestic oil prices as what the current administration is saying.

Many oil and gas companies aren’t interested in investing in federal land as “one administration imposes restrictions and the next removes them,” Sims said, which means that that investment wouldn’t be stable.

“The U.S. is producing record amounts of oil and gas already. The biggest limit to more production is global demand, not restrictions on federal lands. There may be a specific example or two where we see increased drilling activity on federal land thanks to the executive order,” Sims said. “But that additional supply is small relative to our total domestic supply and the global supply, so don’t expect prices to drop because of it.”

One of Trump’s first executive orders was to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Treaty. Two hundred countries have signed the treaty to tackle climate change since 2015, and its goal is to prevent global temperatures from rising above pre-industrial levels as well as to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

During Trump’s first term, he pulled out of the deal, favoring fossil fuel energy consumption. However, when former President Biden took office, he re-pledged his support for the environmental treaty.

In addition, President Trump also paused the leasing of land for offshore wind farms in federally owned U.S. water. Today, wind farms provide 10% of electricity to the U.S., one of the largest renewable energy sources. Trump has been an outspoken critic of wind farms, and this executive order is just another step in confirming this.

A memo posted on the White House website on Monday evening after the executive order was signed said, “This withdrawal temporarily prevents consideration of any area in the OCS (Offshore Continental Shelf) for any new or renewed wind energy leasing for the purposes of generation of electricity or any other such use derived from the use of wind.”

The nominee for interior secretary, former governor and former presidential candidate Doug Burgum (ND-R) said at his confirmation hearing that the projects are already in place and that the projects that make sense would continue regardless of the executive order.

Similarly, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which “enhanced or created 20 tax incentives for clean energy and manufacturing,” according to the U.S. Treasury Department’s website, will not be affected by Trump’s actions.

This means that some of the green policies put in place by the past administration will not be touched or removed until congressional action is enacted. One part of the IRA that could be impacted by the new administration is the funds that have not already been allotted. At the moment, those funds are on pause.

“They (Biden era environmental policies) have already had an impact and will continue to have an impact (on the environment). The expectation is that the Trump administration will redirect some of the funding for renewable energy technologies,” Sims said. “This will limit some of the short-run effects of policies, particularly those designed to incentivize businesses and individuals to adopt certain technologies. However, a lot of the funding in these policies and executive orders was directed at research and development and building infrastructure.”

Sims says that many of the policies and investments of the past administration will, in his words, “live on.”

One significant incentive for everyday Americans in the IRA was solar energy investment, and at the moment, Trump has not explicitly taken action on this renewable energy source. However, during a presidential debate in September, he voiced his support in favor of it.

Another Trump secretary appointment, Chris Wright, nominee for energy secretary, comes into the administration with a heavily pro-fossil fuel energy background. He served as the CEO of a major fracking company based in Colorado. Under the Biden administration, their policies danced around fracking. They never outright banned the practice but instead pushed for more green energy actions. However, Trump has taken full-fledged support and will harness the natural gas through the fracking process, which has its own environmental implications.

Although Wright is heavily pro-fossil fuel, he’s also been an outspoken supporter of nuclear energy and geothermal energy, two renewable energy sources. Geothermal energy makes electricity 24/7 by using the natural heat from the Earth and creating steam that can spin a turbine.

It thus reduces the need for power plants and fossil fuels to power said plants. Emphasizing nuclear energy could have its only implications for Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the home to the first operational nuclear reactors some 80 years ago. It sits just 30 minutes from UT campus and could offer new opportunities for expanded nuclear energy use.

On the flip side of renewable energy, however, President Trump has ended an order by former President Biden to push a goal that by 2030, half of all cars sold will be electric vehicles. In Trump’s eyes, he’s promoting consumer choice, not a government-decided decision. However, it puts another green energy policy on the back burner.

President Trump has done exactly what he pledged to do in the campaign — to pull back a variety of green energy policies and, in turn, implement pro-fossil fuel practices. For climate change advocates, it’s a confusing and disappointing action. However, it’s an encouraging era for the oil and gas industry.