North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R), is Trump’s choice to lead the Dept. of the Interior and a new “National Energy Council” to coordinate multi agency actions in the sector.
Photo courtesy of Office of the Governor of North Dakota
President-elect Donald Trump is moving swiftly to select his nominations for cabinet posts, with some considered controversial by non-supporters. These nominees would need to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, but Trump has said he would push for recess appointments if necessary.
The president-elect also posted to social media that he would not support a candidate to lead the Senate who did not agree to such appointments. Sen. John Thune (R-N.D.), who was elected Nov. 13 to be the new GOP Senate leader beginning in 2025, said he is not opposed to recess appointments, according to news reports.
The announced choices to lead the U.S. Departments of Interior and Energy reflect the incoming administration’s anticipated shift to more U.S. fossil fuel development. Chris Wright, the choice to head the U.S. Dept. of Energy, currently is the CEO of Liberty Energy, a Denver-based fracking company, but is also on the board of Oklo, an advanced nuclear reactor developer that receives agency funding to develop its cleaner technology.
Trump also named North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) as his nominee for both Interior Secretary and chair of a new federal entity called the National Energy Council that would include all agencies involved in permitting, regulating, producing, generating, distributing and transporting “all forms of American energy,” the governor said in a statement. As energy “czar,” according to references by Trump, Burgum said he would seek “an unprecedented level of coordination among federal agencies to advance American energy.” Efforts will focus on boosting private sector investment, streamlining “red tape” and innovation, Trump said.
The state of North Dakota gets about 55% of its power from coal-fired plants but also 36% from onshore wind, according to the federal Energy Information Administration. It ranks sixth among states in generating wind, at about 4 GW.
Emily Skor, CEO of Growth Energy, described Burgum as “uniquely qualified to coordinate an all-of-government approach to U.S. energy dominance,” adding that North Dakota has “a thriving renewable fuel sector, growing alongside oil and gas while reducing emissions with carbon capture.”
But environmental advocates say Trump’s picks, if confirmed, could set back efforts to address climate change and environmental safeguards in place for decades.
Jeff Deyette, deputy director of the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said Wright’s nomination “makes crystal clear the fossil fuel industry’s outsized and undue influence on shaping and implementing the Trump Administration’s agenda.”
Leah Donahey, senior advocacy director at the League of Conservation Voters, said Burgum helped organize the pre-election event at which Trump offered to promote fossil fuel interests in exchange for $1 billion in political contributions. “Instead of comparing Burgum to other Trump nominees, the question should be how much is Burgum willing to hand over to oil CEOs and other big polluters,” she said. “If Burgum cares about our public lands, he will disavow the MAGA Project 2025 agenda and Trump’s extreme campaign to eliminate protections in order to ‘drill, drill, drill’.”
Different Priorities at EPA
Trump also nominated former Republican House Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In a Nov. 11 statement, Trump said Zeldin would push for deregulation while “maintaining the highest environmental standards.”
Mark Sudol, a senior advisor at regulatory consulting firm Dawson & Associates, told ENR that he expects a second Trump administration to seek to craft new rules narrowing what U.S. waterways would require federal protection under the Clean Water Act. Currently, numerous lawsuits are challenging the existing rule, finalized in 2023, with some states using the current federal rule to guide permitting while others are not, he said.
Sudol is formerly chief of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ regulatory program responsible for drafting the Corps’ guidance in federal waterway permitting in response to the “significant nexus” test outlined in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2006 Rapanos decision related to federally protected waters in the U.S.
But developing a new rule will take at least one to two years, Sudol said, because EPA will have to start from scratch. The Trump administration goal to reduce the federal workforce is set to jeopardize those “who know how to get through these processes and get things done, and replace them with people who are new, they’re going to make mistakes,” Sudol said. “A revised rule could be held up just because they don’t jump through all the hoops and wickets and things that are necessary to get it through.”
DOT Chief Nominee
Sean Duffy, a former congressman and county prosecutor from Wisconsin, and Fox Business host, is the Trump choice to be U.S. Secretary of Transportation. In a Nov. 18 post on Truth Social, the president-elect said Duffy “will use his experience and the relationships he has built over many years in Congress to maintain and rebuild our nation’s infrastructure … focusing on safety, efficiency and innovation.”
Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said in a statement, “Transportation policy has a long bipartisan history, and I look forward to continuing to maintain the tradition under former Congressman Sean Duffy’s leadership and working together to pass the next surface transportation authorization, if he is confirmed.”
Tom Ichniowski has been writing about the federal government as ENR’s Washington Bureau Chief since the George H.W. Bush administration, and he has covered at least five major highway bills. A recognized expert on government policy on infrastructure and regulation, Tom is also a Baltimore native and Orioles fan who grew up rooting for Brooks and Frank Robinson. He is a graduate of Columbia College and Columbia’s graduate school of journalism, where he once used “unrelentless” in a headline.
Pam is ENR’s senior editor for government coverage, focusing on federal environmental and labor issues as they relate to the construction industry. She has a degree in journalism and an M.A. in writing fiction, and has worked previously as both an editor at ENR (2007-2016) and as a freelancer for a variety of publications and clients. One of her favorite gigs involved writing about stars, black holes and the mysteries of the universe for NASA.
As ENR Editor-at-Large for Energy, Business and Workforce, Debra K. Rubin has a broad vantage for news, issues and trends in global engineering and construction related to key areas of global energy development and transition, corporate business and management, regulation and risk and next-generation workforce development.
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