Last year, when Donald Trump was running for president, he made a bold pitch to oil executives and lobbyists at a chopped-steak dinner at Mar-a-Lago: Donate $1 billion to his campaign, and they’d save more than that in taxes and legal expenses if he took the White House.
Fossil fuel interests ponied up less than half that much in donations, lobbying and advertising during the election, according to an analysis by the environmental group Climate Power.
Yet, Trump has already more than delivered for the oil and gas industry, according to new reporting by Lisa Friedman.
For the fossil fuel donors who bought into Trump’s promise, the first six months of his second term have delivered a remarkable return on investment.
Here are some of the numbers from Lisa’s article.
New and expanded tax breaks: $18 billion
All told, provisions in Trump’s domestic policy bill passed this month will save the oil and gas industry roughly $18 billion in new and expanded tax benefits, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, which analyzes tax policies for Congress.
One surprising measure offered tax breaks worth an estimated $1.48 billion for metallurgical coal, a type of coal used to make steel that is typically exported.
Fossil fuel interests are expected to save another $1.5 billion because the bill delayed penalties for companies that emit excess methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.
What’s harder to measure
Not included in that $18 billion is what could be a fresh influx of business resulting from President Trump’s trade deal with the European Union. The agreement included a pledge from the bloc to buy $250 billion worth of American energy each year for the rest of Trump’s term. Though hitting those numbers could be almost impossible, Somini Sengupta and Max Bearak reported.
And the projections don’t account for any competitive advantage that oil and gas companies gained when Congress rolled back tens of billions in tax incentives for clean energy investments and electric vehicle purchases.
Fossil fuel interests also stand to benefit from billions more dollars in general corporate tax breaks, like a permanent 20 percent business income deduction that will cost taxpayers an estimated $737 billion.
All this comes as the Trump administration is rolling back policies to combat climate change, including this week’s move to revoke the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific justification for regulating greenhouse gases, known as the endangerment finding.
Subsidies over the next decade: $190 billion
The oil and gas industry has long benefited from favorable tax provisions, which Lisa called the “zombies of the U.S. tax code” last year. These add up to billions of dollars every year, and they’ve proven resilient even when Democrats are in power.
These breaks include a 112-year-old incentive that allows companies to write off up to 80 percent of the cost of drilling in the first year of operation, and a 99-year-old provision that allows companies to deduct a percentage of their revenue from their taxable income.
Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, calculated that oil and gas interests would receive an estimated $190 billion in tax breaks and subsidies over the next 10 years when provisions in the new domestic policy bill are combined with existing tax breaks.
He has introduced legislation that would repeal these subsidies, but if history is any indication, it is not likely to get very far.
The price that matters most: $69.20
Towering over these billion-dollar figures in the tax bill is a single number, roughly the price of a new video game, that matters more than anything else: the per-barrel price of crude oil, which was about $69.20 at press time.
Since Trump took office, oil prices have swung wildly in response to Trump’s tariffs and tensions in the Middle East. When prices fall to around $60 per barrel, oil companies start to re-examine expansion plans. If prices fall even lower, domestic oil production could flatten or even decline.
A small drop in oil prices can translate into huge economic impacts for the industry. One expert told Lisa that it would take about $71 billion in regulatory relief to counterbalance a $15 drop in the price per barrel of oil.
Climate data
Worldwide goal of tripling renewables is off to a slow start
At the United Nations climate summit in Dubai in 2023, nearly 200 countries agreed to triple their renewable capacity by 2030. For the first time since the nations began meeting three decades ago, the meeting produced a global pact calling for “transitioning away from fossil fuels.”
Two years later, their national renewable energy targets have increased by just 2 percent in aggregate, according to a new analysis from Ember Energy.
Before the agreement, countries planned to roughly double renewables in the same time period. Recent estimates show their ambitions haven’t changed much.
There’s some good news: China is picking up a lot of slack. According to the International Energy Agency, China’s rapid renewables expansion will account for 60 percent of global renewables growth through 2030.
Its estimates from October show global renewable capacity growing by 2.7 times between 2022 and 2030. — Claire Brown
The Trump administration
Energy Dept. attacks climate science in contentious report
Sea level rise is not accelerating. More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be good for plant growth. The computer models used to predict global warming tend to exaggerate future temperature increases.
These arguments, routinely made by people who reject the scientific consensus on climate change, were included in an unusual report issued by the Energy Department on Tuesday. The report, which is meant to support the Trump administration’s sweeping efforts to roll back climate regulations, contends that the mainstream scientific view on climate change is too dire and overlooks the positive effects of a warming planet.
Climate scientists said the 151-page report misrepresented or cherry-picked a large body of research on global warming. — Maxine Joselow and Brad Plumer
Conservation
Trump wants a new border wall. It would block a key wildlife corridor.
A Trump administration plan to build 25 miles of wall along a remote stretch of rolling grasslands and mountains in Arizona would block one of the largest and most important remaining wildlife corridors on the state’s border with Mexico, according to a report this month by the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation group.
Wildlife cameras have photographed 20 species of wildlife moving freely across the border in this area — including black bears, mountain lions and mule deer — movement that would be sharply curtailed by the planned 30-foot-tall wall, researchers say.
The area also contains critical habitat for endangered jaguars, at least three of which have been recorded in the area over the past decade. — Douglas Main
More climate news from around the web:
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Doug Burgum, the secretary of the Interior Department, ordered his agency to remove any policies that offer “preferential treatment” for the wind and solar industry, E & E News reports.
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Hotter summers could be making us sicker in unexpected ways, The Washington Post reports.
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Iran’s president warns that his country is on the brink of a severe water crisis, according to Reuters.
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Claire Brown covers climate change for The Times and writes for the Climate Forward newsletter.
The post Fossil Fuel Companies’ Profitable Bet on Trump appeared first on New York Times.
