Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council splits from all-of-the-above energy strategy

The Trump administration appears to be deviating from the all-of-the-above energy strategy that congressional Republicans favor to solve rising energy demand.

During National Clean Energy Week, Brittany Kelm, a former Shell policy advisor who now works as a senior policy advisor for the administration’s National Energy Dominance Council, told renewables industry attendees that the council will “run to the ground anything [they] need for [their] company’s specific projects.”

That is, if those projects are oil, gas, or nuclear energy. When Tech Brew asked Kelm why the administration had lengthened permitting timelines for proposed solar and wind projects on federal lands by requiring Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to execute an “elevated review” of all such projects, she said that the administration’s focus is on oil, gas, and nuclear power.

“It’s down to prioritizing [the] baseload power directive of President Trump…We wake up every day with no question of what our priority objectives are,” Kelm said. “That has just been a focus of permitting for those specific energies, which are oil and gas—obviously inclusive of pipelines—the nuclear side, and the permitting for such on federal lands.”

An approach that excludes solar and wind runs perpendicular to the ideology of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, a nonprofit that encourages Republican support for clean energy. In an interview with Tech Brew, CEO Heather Reams said “we need to make sure that we’re treating all of these energies, these technologies, the same way.” Reams is also the chair of National Clean Energy Week.

“What you do for one kind of industry you do for everybody,” Reams said. “We’re wanting the government to be more of a fair arbitrator.”

This isn’t the first time that clean energy conservatives have taken issue with the Trump administration’s energy strategy at National Clean Energy Week. During remarks on Wednesday, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), said that Trump’s halting of construction on clean energy projects is “counterproductive” and “unfair.”

“The federal government is again departing from that all-of-the-above approach, particularly for wind and solar,” Murkowski said. “The worst thing that we can do is take the resources off the table.”