” … although Trump was not a libertarian, was his philosophy in energy, environment, and regulation reasonably free market? Were the President’s motivations laudatory? Consumer-, entrepreneur-, and taxpayer-driven? I believe they were, outside of foreign trade policy with certain countries.”

I recently had this exchange with a ideological and personal friend, Richard Ebeling, BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, about the civil war within the libertarian movement in regard to the Donald Trump presidency. Always there, the divide boiled over last week with Trump’s last stand. I was part of it.

After reviewing our exchange, I revisited many Trump-related posts here at MasterResource regarding energy, climate, and the environment. (Wednesday’s post will list approximately 30.) The question is: although Trump was not a libertarian, was his philosophy in this area reasonably free market, outside of foreign trade policy with certain countries?…

“Four years of regulatory reform has promoted the prosperity and liberty of Americans and advanced the rule of law. This Regulatory Plan continues that tradition.” [below]

“Reforms of environmental and energy regulations have propelled America to a position of energy dominance while maintaining and advancing the cleanliness of our air, water, and land.” [below]

Two per year, each U.S. federal agency publishes a Regulatory Agenda. The Trump Administration just last week released its Fall 2020 agenda, excerpted below.

MasterResource has closely followed Trump’s deregulatory actions on energy and the environment (see here). It has been a positive story as mentioned in our final comment below. But what is good is bad to the regulate-regulate-regulate crowd, seeing market failure as ubiquitous and both analytic failure and government failure as unimportant.…

“The end-result [from ignoring one properly identified modelling “error”], unwittingly or otherwise, massively skewed EERE’s economic ‘determinations’ in favor of stricter standards for commercial packaged boilers. This ‘error’ also exists in other proposed rulemakings. In other words, EERE likely ignored this correction request to avoid embarrassment by exposing deep analytical biases within EERE, its Labs and contractors.”

This post concludes a three-part series on the highs and lows of the DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technology during the Trump window of opportunity. Part I was an overview, and Part II examined EERE’s process rule and overhaul efforts to date.

Historically, Final Rules become that when published in the Federal Register. Prior, such rules have been subject to change pursuant to the “error correction” procedure codified at 10 C.F.R. § 430.5 (etc.).…

“In the past, economic justification could be attained by simply providing, on average, cumulative energy savings that barely exceeded the additional costs of energy improvements over the life of the appliance. The “career professionals” within EERE–its National Labs and subcontractors–have become very adept at gaming (skewing) the determinations in favor of more regulations. Unfortunately for consumers, this trend continues virtually unabated.”

In 1996, EERE published a Process Rule for developing and issuing new or revised appliance efficiency standards and test procedures. The generally useful initiative is embodied in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) under 10 CFR Appendix A to Subpart C of Part 430.

The Process Rule has been treated by EERE as a guide (think Barbossa and the Pirate code). Among its original and retained objectives was (ostensible) regulatory transparency.…