Low-Energy Fridays: Is the National Energy Council a good idea?
After his electoral victory, President Donald J. Trump announced the formation of a “National Energy Council” that will coordinate energy and environment-related activities within the administration—though the specifics of when this may arrive and in what form are still unknown. This prompts two thoughts: First, this is going to make for very confusing acronyms since the “National Economic Council” has existed since 1993. Second, this new approach to energy and environmental policymaking is unlikely to change the overarching policy picture, but its creation may have some advantages for agenda implementation. This then begs the question of if this is worth doing.
Councils like this are not unusual, and their biggest value is an ability to communicate information coming from disparate agencies directly to the president and vice versa. This helps the president more easily implement broad agendas. The classic example of this comes from national security. The National Security Council (NSC) has existed since 1947 and is able to coordinate information and actions across 18 intelligence agencies, six military branches, and five governmental departments. The NSC largely simplifies the agenda setting of the president and the receipt of intelligence and analysis needed for decision-making. While the utility of the NSC is obvious, does the upcoming National Energy Council warrant such measures?
The answer is yes and no. In the case of national security, there is considerable overlap of function across the coordinated agencies. The departments and agencies that will be represented under the National Energy Council do not have such overlap since much of their policy setting is related to issues like domestic regulation where authority is distinctly defined. But this does not mean that the National Energy Council won’t have any value, because it is likely that Trump’s agenda setting will benefit from simplified, coordinated advisement.
One event that demonstrates the potential value of a council is Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement during his first term. There was very little clarity on his decision even shortly before his withdrawal announcement. It was reported that a reason for this is because Trump was undecided on the matter, as he was receiving a constant stream of information from different advisors. These advisors—whether aware of it or not—were communicating information to the president based on their personal biases and agenda priorities, not the president’s. In that situation, Trump would have benefited from having an established body of policymakers that he could call upon to explain how to achieve the outcome he was seeking, and leave them to come up with policy recommendations that could best achieve said outcome.
Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden had relatively simple instructions to energy-related policymaking bodies: Create more regulation. Such a policy doesn’t require any back-and-forth coordination with the president. But broader objectives that Trump has signaled are a priority, such as reducing energy costs, will require policy changes from multiple-related bodies, and could benefit from coordination.
Additionally, permitting reform is likely to benefit from coordination, as a recent court case ruled that the Council on Environmental Quality—which creates guidance on federal permitting—does not have the authority to enforce how other agencies issue permit decisions. In other words, there won’t be a central lever on permitting policy that the president can pull, and instead, policy changes will be required across the many agencies that issue permits.
Another potential benefit for Trump is in overcoming what is sometimes called “Maslow’s Hammer,” which is explained by the phrase “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” This bias exists in policymaking, where department heads tend to favor policy solutions that they know they can implement with their existing resources. For example, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the military advised President John F. Kennedy to pursue a military solution, and the diplomats advised him to pursue a diplomatic one, creating confusion that the president then had to navigate.
The National Energy Council can improve policymaking by ensuring that proposals appropriately consider all the options and resources available to involved agencies rather than relying on policymakers to disparately adopt uncoordinated policies. This is better for the president, who is less likely to have to manage inter-agency conflict, and better for government agencies that can more easily coordinate their policies with other agencies.
On the other hand, there is a potential problem. Since the Secretary of the Interior will head the National Energy Council, if other energy-related departments and agencies have their agendas subordinated to the Department of the Interior, it could exacerbate tension and interagency conflict. But that will depend largely upon the managerial expertise of those involved, and can’t easily be predicted.
What we do know is that presidents often like to shake things up and give more deference to some agencies or councils. The formation of the National Energy Council seems to be an indication that Trump is interested in elevating this issue. Regardless of how the National Energy Council is perceived, it is important to keep in mind that presidents ought to arrange their policy-setting bodies in a manner that suits their managerial styles. This is standard as positions within the executive branch are elevated or demoted with each change in administration and based on the particular priorities of each president. The creation of the National Energy Council is unlikely to change the broad strokes of policy. However, the coalescing of agenda setting could make policymaking easier for Trump.