With Donald Trump, a notorious climate change sceptic, poised to enter the White House for a second term, the climate world – from officials to campaigners and business executives – is bracing for the impact of his presidency.
Trump, a Republican business mogul who has called climate change a “scam”, has made no secret about his intentions. From plans to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement once more, to attacks on the scientific research underpinning our knowledge of global warming and the roll-back of key emission-cutting regulations, the incoming administration could mark a major setback for climate action.
Experts believe one of Trump’s first moves after being sworn in on January 20 could be to pull the US out of the landmark global climate agreement. If he takes that step – something he did last time around – the US would join just three other countries outside the Paris Agreement: Iran, Libya and Yemen.
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The process to leave would take a year from the time Trump triggers it, meaning that the US will still be part of the Paris Agreement when the COP30 climate talks take place in Brazil in November.
Trump’s team is also reportedly mulling a more audacious attempt to pull the US out of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the instrument underpinning global climate action, for the first time. While leaving the Paris pact would be legally straightforward, experts are divided on whether Trump could withdraw the US from the UNFCCC without Senate approval and – if he did – how easy it would be for a future president to re-join.
Frances Colón, lead for international climate policy at the Center for American Progress, told journalists this week that Washington’s role at COP30 is “not clear”. “Diplomats will do their best, but they’ll have to see whether the White House will be interested at all in engaging in COP talks, and this is still an open question,” she said.
Leaving the Paris pact would mean the US would no longer have to report on its greenhouse gas emissions each year and would have weaker legal responsibilities to provide climate finance for developing countries to adopt clean energy and adapt to a warming world.
Developing-world climate dollars at risk
Joe Thwaites, senior advocate for international climate finance with the US-based Natural Resources Defense Council, said Trump’s administration is expected to try to cut back on international climate finance provision everywhere it can – but that doesn’t mean funding will fall to zero.
Early in his first term in 2017, when Trump announced that the US would leave the Paris Agreement, he launched a blistering attack on the UN’s Green Climate Fund (GCF) – which was littered with inaccuracies – and refused to deliver any more of a $3-billion pledge to the fund made by his predecessor, Barack Obama.
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The US seems unlikely to stump up the $4 billion it now owes to the GCF under Trump, after the Biden administration made another large promise. But some international climate finance may be forthcoming if Congress continues approving money for organisations like the US Agency for International Development and the Global Environment Facility which back climate projects overseas.
“It’s not just about what Trump wants – and last time around, we saw that a lot… he didn’t get his way,” Thwaites said.
Trump-proofing climate finance
International climate finance allocations added up to about $600 million a year when Trump was previously in office. That’s a far cry from the roughly $11 billion a year provided by the end of Biden’s government, but advocates again plan to push hard to ensure the taps are not turned off.
Thwaites said international climate finance “is a vital investment”, adding “there’s still a strong case – including just a very self-interested case for why the US would want to carry on providing this kind of finance” – and geopolitically important partners such as small island developing states are likely to keep on asking for it as a priority.
In addition, the world is now better prepared for a climate-sceptic US president, he noted, compared with the shock in 2016. “People have priced in Trump’s impact,” Thwaites said.
A protester at COP29 calls on wealthy nations to “pay up” (Photo: UN Climate Change/Kiara Worth)
This was reflected at the COP29 climate summit in Baku, he said, where the deal on a new finance goal to channel money to developing countries reflected the likelihood of Washington not playing ball for the next four years in terms of its size and composition.
For example, the decision to allow all finance coming via multilateral banks to be counted towards the goal to provide government finance of $300 billion a year by 2035 means that contributions made by the US can be included in the total, even if it pulls out of the Paris pact. Wealthier emerging economies like China are also encouraged to make voluntary contributions, which could help make up any shortfall due to the US.
Uncertain future for EXIM
One US provider of finance to clean energy overseas, however, could be severely affected under Trump.
According to Kate DeAngelis, deputy director for international finance at Friends of the Earth, Trump will be under pressure from some Republicans in Congress not to renew authorisation for the EXIM (Export-Import) Bank when its current mandate runs out in 2026.
This would effectively shut down the organisation. EXIM is a semi-independent agency and has backed both fossil fuel and renewable energy deployment abroad under both the previous Trump and Biden administrations.
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It is now considering support for about a dozen projects mining for minerals like lithium, which are needed for the energy transition. DeAngelis said this support is now in greater doubt because of the change in the presidency, although she suspects the bank would still back them.
Under Biden, the bank continued to support fossil fuel projects in countries like Bahrain, and that is very unlikely to change under Trump, she added.
Climate regulation bonfire
Fossil fuels are also expected to get a boost on the domestic front. Under his refrain of “drill, baby, drill”, the president-elect has promised to increase oil and gas extraction in the US, while rolling back many of the landmark climate regulations introduced by the Biden administration aimed at slashing emissions.
Hannah Kolus, a senior analyst with Rhodium Group’s energy and climate practice, said it looks “very likely that Trump will pursue an aggressively deregulatory agenda” judging by his first stint in office and recent statements from the incoming administration.
“Rolling back regulations would be a lengthy process, so it’s not going to happen on day one,” added Kolus, “but certainly by the end of his term, he could remove many of the key climate regulations enacted over the past four years.”
WA Parish Generating Station, a natural gas and coal power plant, in Fort Bend County near Houston, Texas on June 25, 2023. (Photo by Reginald Mathalone/NurPhoto)
The Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas (GHG) standards for power plants could be first on the chopping block. Announced less than a year ago, the rules require existing coal-fired power plants that plan to operate beyond 2039 and large new gas-fired power stations to cut 90% of their GHG emissions by 2032. Trump vowed to revoke those regulations on the election campaign trail last August when he described them as an “anti-American energy crusade”.
Another set of rules aimed at “sharply” reducing methane emissions from oil and gas operations risk a similar fate, along with a new levy meant to punish those not complying with the measures. Fossil-fuel lobby groups have repeatedly called on the incoming administration to cancel the methane regulations.
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More stringent emissions standards for passenger cars and small trucks – announced in March 2024 – may also be targeted.
Rachel Cleetus, policy director with the climate and energy programme at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), said it is “very clear” the broader intention is to boost the fossil fuel sector. The rhetoric of many nominees for key positions in the incoming administration is about “delivering for the fossil fuel industry, promoting their profits, their narrow interest over the public interest,” she told Climate Home.
Reprieve for IRA measures?
While reversing specific regulations might be an easy win for Trump, the future of the mammoth clean energy incentives enacted through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) remains less clear.
Trump has repeatedly taken aim at tax credits for electric vehicles and renewable energy, labelling them wasteful spending. Reuters reported last November that his transition team was working on plans to kill off the subsidies.
But experts think it won’t be easy for the Trump administration to dismantle the IRA. Congress holds the power to modify tax credits and, although it is now Republican-controlled, Trump could struggle to convince enough lawmakers to push through its agenda.
Rhodium Group’s Kolus said that’s because Republican districts have benefited the most from IRA subsidies so far – and there’s a history of bipartisan support for many of those. “It seems unlikely that Congress is going to repeal all of the energy tax credits,” she added.
Leading Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested that “a scalpel and not a sledgehammer” should be used for making changes. Whichever tool Trump ends up wielding, the question is what that would do to the emissions-cutting targets spelled out in the US’s updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement unveiled last December.
The Biden administration insisted that the US could reach the goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 61-66% below 2005 levels by 2035, even if Trump rolls back climate policy. But others are more sceptical. Even if the IRA was left untouched, undoing regulations on fossil fuel standards alone would put the US on a less ambitious path to reduce emissions by 31-51% by 2035, according to modelling by Rhodium Group.
Climate science under threat
Climate science is another domain where experts fear the incoming administration will go on the offensive. Trump has a lengthy track record of amplifying disinformation while denigrating legitimate climate research.
Cleetus of UCS told Climate Home “a very somber mood” pervades the scientific community as it braces for the start of an administration that, she said, “holds a deeply anti-scientific view”.
Cleetus expects the Trump team will try and “take a wrecking ball” to federal agencies at the forefront of climate research. That would include the Environment Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which plays a crucial role in monitoring global temperatures and devising climate models.
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“It is a real problem,” said Cleetus, “because these career scientists are doing the kind of bedrock science that helps inform good policies that we can take to both prevent climate change and protect against its impacts.”
And the consequences of a potential Trump attack on climate science would reach far beyond the American borders. The US government is one of the world’s largest supporters of climate science and its federal agencies provide key instruments, such as satellites, that facilitate the understanding of global warming, its causes and impacts across the globe.
Despite the gathering storm clouds, Cleetus said “we should not concede that this destruction will be complete”.
“Just because all of these political signals are aligned one way, it does not mean that we live in a dictatorship,” she added. “The United States is still a democracy. There are public interests that will come forward in different kinds of ways.”
(Reporting by Matteo Civillini; additional reporting by Joe Lo and Megan Rowling; editing by Megan Rowling)