Here’s how the White House is racing to Trump-proof Biden’s climate legacy

On the morning after Election Day, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan convened several of his top officials for a somber meeting.

Most officials had woken up Wednesday to the news that Donald Trump, who once vowed to eliminate the EPA in “almost every form,” would return to the White House in January. Regan sought to reassure employees that their achievements under President Joe Biden would “stand the test of time,” and he encouraged staffers to “run through the tape” and continue making progress during the 76-day lame-duck period between Election Day and Inauguration Day, EPA spokesman Nick Conger said.

In just the past two days, the administration has finalized plans to limit oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and to save an imperiled bird - the greater sage grouse - by restricting drilling, mining and livestock grazing across nearly 65 million acres of its habitat in 10 Western states. Officials have met behind closed doors to wrap up work on a study justifying the administration’s pause on approvals of new liquefied natural gas exports - a pause that Trump has promised to end on his “very first day back.” And they are hustling to issue at least a half-dozen other significant policies, affecting toxic chemicals as well as California’s push to phase out gas-powered cars and trucks by 2035.

Across the federal government, Trump’s election has set off a scramble among political appointees and career bureaucrats alike to lock in Biden’s landmark environmental initiatives. Some staffers say they learned a lesson in 2017, when Trump swiftly dismantled some of President Barack Obama’s signature environmental achievements.

Some Trump allies said these actions could slow - but ultimately not stop - the former president’s energy agenda.

“It’s unfortunate but expected that [Biden officials] will try to throw as many roadblocks at what President-elect Trump has pledged to do with respect to energy,” said Tom Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance and the former head of Trump’s Energy Department transition team. “But I suspect those will be minor blips in the road towards achieving his goals.”

The Trump transition team is already considering and vetting Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist who led the EPA during Trump’s first term, to reprise that role, according to two people familiar with the matter. Wheeler did not respond to a request for comment; Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Cabinet decisions “will be announced when they are made.”

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Perhaps no agency embodies the Biden administration’s lame-duck environmental strategy better than the EPA, which has emerged as an epicenter of the president’s ambitious climate agenda. Environmentalists said they expect the agency to take several major actions in the coming weeks touching everything from electric vehicles to toxic chemicals.

At the top of the list: Trump-proofing California’s transition to EVs. Under the Clean Air Act, California can receive a waiver from the EPA to set tougher vehicle emissions rules than those of the federal government. More than a dozen other states follow California’s stricter rules, collectively accounting for about 40 percent of the U.S. auto market.

Before Trump takes office, the EPA plans to grant California a waiver to enforce its rule aimed at banning sales of new gasoline-powered cars in the state by 2035, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plans are not yet public.

“This is by far the most significant rule in the United States setting the pace for vehicle electrification,” said Craig Segall, senior vice president at the advocacy group Evergreen Action and former assistant chief counsel at the California Air Resources Board. “It helps lock in the progress of the American automobile industry.”

Asked for comment on the waiver, Conger said in an email that the EPA “follows a prescribed process under the Clean Air Act” to review such requests and holds a public comment period, after which the administrator “determines whether the requirements for obtaining a waiver have been met.”

Environmentalists said they also expect the agency to finalize three rules restricting the release of toxic chemicals. One rule will ban most uses of perchloroethylene, a solvent widely used in dry cleaning that can damage the central nervous system. Another will limit the use of trichloroethylene, a chemical linked to kidney cancer that is used to make refrigerants and some household cleaning products.

The EPA’s enforcement office, for its part, is pressing to impose penalties and reach settlements with companies accused of violating the nation’s bedrock environmental laws. But some companies are stalling in the hopes of negotiating with more lenient Trump officials instead, according to an EPA enforcement employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

“The regulated community is dragging their feet,” the staffer said. “They want to see if they can get a better deal from the next administration.”

At the Energy Department, meanwhile, experts are working to finish a study on whether continued U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) are “consistent with the public interest,” as required by the Natural Gas Act. A draft of the study will be released before the end of the year, an administration official confirmed.

Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at the advocacy group Public Citizen, said he expects the draft to say these exports are not in the public interest because of their climate consequences, as well as their harm to public health in disadvantaged communities along the Gulf Coast. That finding could help environmentalists challenge the Trump administration’s approvals of LNG projects in court - and potentially block billions of dollars worth of LNG infrastructure that could increase U.S. greenhouse gas emissions for decades to come.

“Biden’s decision on LNG is the most consequential thing he can do on climate and fossil fuels before Trump takes office,” Cassidy DiPaola, a spokeswoman for Fossil Free Media, a group that opposes fossil fuels, said in a statement.

The oil and gas industry, a frequent foe of the Biden administration, is preparing to scrutinize all of its lame-duck actions - and potentially challenge them in court.

“It’s no secret that we’ve had our share of disagreement with the Biden administration on energy policy over the last three-and-a-half years, and some of these policies that could be proposed in the next couple of months could be concerning,” said Dustin Meyer, senior vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs at the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group. “We really won’t know much until we actually see the policies, but we always keep our options open.”

The administration also moved this week to restrict fossil fuel exploration on Alaska’s North Slope, by narrowing the scope of an oil and gas lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge scheduled for December. On Wednesday, hours after Trump’s election, the Interior Department issued a plan for the auction, which was mandated by a 2017 tax bill under Trump.

Asked about the department’s plans for the coming months, an Interior spokeswoman referred all questions to the White House, which declined to comment.

With the exception of a plan to accelerate solar energy development on public lands, Interior has largely accomplished what it set out to achieve in Biden’s first term, said Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation group.

“From what we can tell, they’ve done a very good job lining this stuff up, so there’s not a whole lot at risk of getting punted into the next administration,” he said. “I think everyone learned that lesson in 2016.”