It’s the moment the energy community has been waiting for: we are about to get a glimpse at Donald Trump’s energy plan. The presumed Republican presidential candidate will be speaking this afternoon at 2 p.m. (EST) in Bismarck, N.D. on his vision for America’s energy future.
Until now, hints at what Trump’s energy plan will contain have been fragmented. In early March, he told Kentucky voters that he “loves clean coal.” Earlier this month in West Virginia, he said he is “thinking about the miners all over this country” and is “going to get those mines open.”
Beyond these short, targeted statements, Trump has provided very little detail as to how he intends to open up the mines and how he’s going to show his love for clean coal. Regardless of this lack of detail, in West Virginia, he told miners in the audience, “you can count on it. You can count on it 100 percent.”
Speaking to Fox News host Sean Hannity last week, Trump stated that his energy plan will “be everything,” including coal and fracking.
The billionaire real estate mogul called on fellow climate change skeptic Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) for help putting together his energy policy. Cramer is noted for having claimed that the Earth is cooling, not warming, and that reported global warming trends are the result of “fraudulent science.” In a Feb. 2, 2012, radio interview, the then congressional candidate stated: “We know the global climate is cooling, number one, we know that, so the idea that CO2 is somehow causing global is on its face fraudulent.”
Cramer, who has received significant campaign funding from the oil and gas and electric utilities industries, opposes regulation as a means to achieve a low-carbon future, which he says is coming regardless of climate change action. The lawmaker has been a vocal opponent of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, carbon emissions standards for existing coal-fired power plants, and said in a May 12 interview with ClimateWire he would recommend Trump scrap the plan in favor of a carbon fee, the proceeds of which would fund fossil energy research.
A slight disagreement broke out following the release of the ClimateWire article and a subsequent report in The Hill newspaper, over whether Cramer’s described mechanism is a carbon tax. The Hill article apparently focused a tad too heavily on the carbon tax idea for Trump’s comfort. “Your story about me & the carbon tax is absolutely incorrect—it is just the opposite. I will not support or endorse a carbon tax!” Trump tweeted to the newspaper.