US President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement for the second time in his first 24 hours in office.
The environmental agreement unites 196 countries to meet the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
The only countries outside this box are Iran, Libya, and Yemen.
“America will be a manufacturing nation again. We have something that no other manufacturing nation has, the most oil and gas of any country on earth,” Trump said at the inauguration. I plan to take advantage of it.” Speech at the U.S. Capitol on Monday. “We train, baby, we train.”
President Trump also withdrew from the climate change agreement during his first term, when he campaigned on the theory that climate change was a hoax spread by China to stunt U.S. economic growth. No such claims were made in his recent election campaign.
President Trump’s 2017 withdrawal took four years to take effect and was rescinded by President-elect Joe Biden’s administration, but this latest withdrawal will take effect in one year.
Here’s what you need to know:
Why would Trump do it (again)?
President Trump recently said the Paris Agreement would cost the United States billions of dollars. He was referring to a pledge by developed countries to give developing countries $100 billion in subsidies to accelerate the transition to renewable energy. The United States also traditionally opposes any form of carbon fines imposed on polluting companies and has not established a carbon market.
President Trump has also consistently supported domestic fossil fuel production as a form of national energy security. He does not explain why he is not considering domestically produced renewable energy in the same way.
Michalis Matiorakis, academic director of the Greek Energy Forum think tank in Thessaloniki, said: “With the investments already being made in fossil gas in the United States, US gas production and exports will increase by about 30% over the next five years. It will double,” he said. “Trump will, of course, claim credit for it, but we cannot achieve increased production in the short term.
Like Mattiorakis and many other analysts, the United States wants to displace Russia as Europe’s main fossil gas supplier because it sees Europe’s dependence on Russian gas as a security liability. That’s what I think. This would deprive Russia of its most lucrative market and therefore tax revenue.
“It’s true that (the United States) is trying to replace Russia in the world market,” Matiulakis said. “We must not forget that the lifting of the embargo on liquefied natural gas (LNG) was carried out under the (former US President Barack) administration.”
Will America’s energy transition stop?
President Trump’s initial efforts to halt the decarbonization of the economy failed.
According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), 35,723 megawatts of coal-fired power plants were retired during President Trump’s first term, more than during President Obama’s first six years in office. They have been replaced by less polluting fossil gas-fired power plants, a trend that began under the Obama administration and continued unabated into President Trump’s first term.
“Reversing the momentum for clean energy in the United States and the world will not be easy,” said Nikos Mantsaris, founder of Green Tank, an energy think tank in Athens. “Renewable energy is by far the cheapest form of energy, and in the U.S. states make their own decisions.”
Solar and wind energy grew during President Trump’s first term, surpassing coal energy for the first time in U.S. history in December 2020, just as Trump was preparing to leave office.
This trend is likely to continue.
In 2022, then-President Joe Biden passed the Inflation Control Act (IRA), which provided $270 billion in tax credits and other incentives for investments in renewable energy. By August last year, the IRA had facilitated $215 billion in investment in solar and wind energy production, and the government had provided $8 billion in tax credits to homeowners for making energy-saving retrofits.
Biden’s stated goal was to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030 and 60% by 2035 compared to 2005. Biden has approved a flurry of IRA projects in the final two months of his term, and those grants will continue to be paid. It will last until 2032, four years after President Trump leaves office.
EIA predicts that most of the increased electricity consumption in the United States in 2025 and 2026 will come from solar power.
This is part of a global change.
The International Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organization and think tank based in Paris, predicts that by 2030, renewable energy will account for two-thirds of electricity production in developed countries.
Matiulakis also believed that President Trump’s policies would not bring about major changes. But the transition to solar and wind energy will slow down for other reasons, he told Al Jazeera.
“Wherever renewable energy sources were rapidly developed, once renewables reached more than 40 percent of the energy mix, a problem arose. We cannot expand the use of . “So we’re seeing a slowdown. This was going to spread to Europe and the United States anyway.”
How much carbon dioxide does the United States pump into the atmosphere compared to other countries?
According to the World Resources Institute, the United States is the world’s second-largest polluter after China, emitting 6 billion tons of carbon-equivalent gas by 2023. This is approximately 16% of the world’s 37 billion tons.
China leads the way with more than twice the emissions of the United States. The European Union and India follow the US with about 3.4 billion tonnes each.
How are other countries reacting?
China’s Foreign Ministry said it was “concerned” about the US withdrawal.
“Climate change is a common challenge facing all humanity. No country can escape from it,” Beijing’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra called it a “really disappointing development.”
Will this expose U.S. products to a carbon tax in the EU?
The newly appointed European Commission is expected to seriously consider imposing a carbon tax on imports from countries that do not have a carbon market like the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS).
ETS sells carbon credits to polluters, giving them an incentive to switch to cleaner forms of energy.
The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) aims to level the playing field for European energy companies and manufacturers competing with countries that do not impose pollution costs.
CBAM enforcement against the United States will become even more likely if President Trump follows through on his threat to impose tariffs on European exports to the United States.