Trump picks controversial 'Project 2025' plan author as oil officials take key energy posts

President Donald Trump has nominated two oil and gas industry officials for key administration posts that will directly influence the role renewables play in the nation’s energy mix over the next four years.

Kathleen Sgamma, president of prominent industry trade group Western Energy Alliance was named director of Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Department of Interior (DoI) agency that administers 1 million sq. km (247.3 million acres) of federal land, or 12.5% of total US landmass.

Audrey Robertson, who was co-founder and CFO of Franklin Mountain Energy, a private oil and gas firm that was sold in January, was named assistant secretary of energy to head the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) office at Department of Energy (DoE).

Robertson is also on the board of directors of oilfield services company Liberty Energy, whose former CEO was Chris Wright, now Trump’s secretary of energy.

Liberty Energy and Western Energy Alliance are based in Denver. Sgamma and Robertson require confirmation in the Senate, where Republicans have a 53-47 majority.

Trump has changed the US policy focus on energy from climate to national security, pivoting mainly to fossil fuels from clean alternatives. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum leads a new National Energy Council with a mandate from Trump to establish American “energy dominance” globally.

The controversial plan, which Trump eventually distanced himself from, called for a drastic reshaping and downsizing of the federal government and aggressive use of executive powers to impose conservative policies that include a shift from prioritising climate change.

That aligns with Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda which she would help implement in tandem with Burgum. That is a dramatically different mission for the agency than under predecessor Joe Biden, where a core focus was to ramp wind and solar energy production on federal lands.

To help enable the country to achieve his ambitious 2035 carbon free electric grid goal, BLM approved several dozen renewable energy projects including those for power lines. Trump inherited dozens more are in various stages of agency environmental review including 2.15GW of wind capacity.

On his first day in office, he imposed a temporary cessation and assessment of federal leasing, financing, and permitting practices for any clean energy-related project on BLM land. Burgum and Sgamma would decide the fate of those initiatives comprising $50bn or more investment.

The mission of EERE, which Robertson would lead, is to drive the research, development, demonstration, and deployment of innovative technologies, systems, and practices that will help complete the US energy transition by 2050, and “ensure the clean energy economy benefits all Americans,” according to DoE.

This agency played an important role under Biden in advancing his climate efforts. EERE has separate offices for geothermal, hydro, solar, and wind technologies that provide money for related cutting-edge research and development (R&D) efforts in the private sector and universities.

It oversees the management and operation of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which specializes in R&D of energy efficiency, energy systems integration, renewable energy and sustainable transportation.

EERE also helps fund DoE national laboratories whose primary mission is to conduct R&D addressing national priorities energy and climate, environment, national security, and health. Much of this involves physical sciences and engineering.

How EERE would fit into Trump’s fossil-heavy energy policy is unclear. He could seek to reduce agency funding, although any effort to limit money for the national laboratories would likely face resistance in Congress.