EXCLUSIVE — The Restoring Energy Dominance Coalition, a conservative nonprofit organization, is spending $1 million on an ad to encourage President Donald Trump to stay the course on his all-of-the-above, America First energy agenda.
The 30-second ad, called ‘Proud,’ will air on TV and have a presence on digital platforms this month in the Washington, D.C., media market, the fifth in a series of spots that started in January.
“Mr. President, keep unleashing American energy in all forms,” the narrator says. “Keep making us proud.”
The RED Coalition was founded in January by former Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette and former Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt for energy stakeholders to support Trump’s policy of unleashing American energy using oil, gas, nuclear, and renewable energy production and restoring U.S. energy dominance.
“He’s his best communicator, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t appreciate the support that outside groups like ours provide him, and that’s what we’re doing,” Brouillette told the Washington Examiner of Trump. “We’re on the ground, I mean, these are people who are actually executing his plan and executing his policy choices, so we think it’s important that we be a part of the conversation as well.”
In an interview, Brouillette underscored the importance of all forms of energy as Trump simultaneously tries to decrease consumer prices and increase domestic manufacturing, in addition to new demands on energy supplies, including from data centers and artificial intelligence.
To that end, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ decision to increase oil production for a second consecutive month has already decreased the average price of a barrel from $70 to $65, at the expense of the domestic market.
“It is important that we produce and not only that we produce, but that we produce here in the United States to meet the economic demand and also to meet our national security requirements,” Brouillette said.
Brouillette contended that Trump, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin were moving at “warp speed,” though he conceded that additional regulatory work would take time.
“They’ve already announced what they want to do with things like the [liquified natural gas] pause,” Brouillette said. “There’s going to be some additional work that they can do around retooling the loan program and other offices within DOE that will allow for different types of incentives to increase production here in the United States.”
Of the EPA, he added, “With regard to some of the additional rules that were layered in during the Biden administration, you’re going to see Lee take a very aggressive stance against some of those and begin a process under the Administrative Procedure Act, the APA, to undo that. Things like MATS, the [mercury and] air toxic rules, those are going to be addressed. Additional [National Environmental Policy Act] reforms are probably going to be in order. So you’ll start to see those things get rolled out and executed over the period of the next few months.”
COULD COAL PLANT LANDFILLS BE THE ANSWER TO THE RARE EARTHS SUPPLY PROBLEM?
Aside from the executive branch, House Republicans this week proposed rolling back green energy tax breaks as part of their tax plan, repealing most of the climate investments former President Joe Biden made through the Inflation Reduction Act.
“Congress is going to recognize exactly what the president’s already recognized: That it’s going to take all forms of energy in order for us to meet the increased demand that we’re all seeing come into the marketplace today,” Brouillette said. “It doesn’t appear to me that Congress is very supportive of mandates on consumers, but they are supportive of production. So I think you’re going to start to see, through the legislative process, some segregation of these issues. And you know, as they get closer to a final passage vote, you’ll start to see these different types of arrangements surface.”
