President Trump Signs Order to Create National Energy Dominance Council

President Donald Trump on Feb. 14 signed an executive order establishing a council to guide the U.S. towards energy dominance. The National Energy Dominance Council is tasked with providing advice on how best to exercise the President’s authority to increase domestic energy production, including recommending a strategy with long-range goals for achieving energy dominance by reducing regulatory barriers, boosting private investment, fostering innovation, and eliminating unnecessary regulations.

The council will focus on expediting the processes of permitting, production, distribution, and regulation of domestic energy. Within 100 days of the order, the council will recommend a plan to raise a national-level awareness on energy dominance issues, such as the urgency of reliable energy, national security concerns with removing reliable and affordable energy sources, jobs supported by the energy sector, and regulatory constraints driving up consumer costs.

The order emphasizes the importance of accelerating the approval and construction of natural gas pipelines in regions such as Alaska, California, and New England. The council will also work towards recommissioning closed power plants and increasing nuclear power production using small modular reactors.

The executive order reflects the new administration’s priority to expand fossil fuel production. As part of a series of executive orders issued on Jan. 20, President Trump declared a national energy emergency and withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement.

The Trump administration has also lifted the pause on new liquefied natural gas export permits implemented by former President Biden, reduced the time for permitting applications for drilling on federal lands, and modified the New Source Review which penalized companies for upgrading coal power plants. By growing the domestic LNG supply chain, the U.S. will reduce its reliance on adversarial countries such as Russia for LNG.