WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senators Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and environmental leaders held a press conference calling for the end of President Trump’s war on affordable, American-made energy, which will raise energy costs for Americans and kill high-quality jobs. The senators were joined by Natural Resources Defense Council’s Senior Vice President of Climate Jackie Wong, Sierra Club’s Executive Director Ben Jealous, and League of Conservation Voters’ Senior Vice President of Government Affairs Tiernan Sittenfeld.

WATCH: FULL VIDEO OF THE PRESS CONFERENCE IS AVAILABLE HERE.

In the hours following his inauguration on January 20, 2025, President Trump signed a slew of executive orders, including the national energy emergency order, to withdraw support for renewable energy—despite its benefits to America’s economy and environment—and grant his administration new powers to promote fossil fuels at the cost of bedrock environmental laws. Kaine and Heinrich introduced legislation to terminate the national energy emergency President Trump declared. The legislation is privileged, meaning that the Senate will be required to vote on it. The vote is expected next week.

“We are producing more energy now than at any other point in our history and the U.S. is the envy of the world when it comes to energy innovation and production. The passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act have accelerated clean energy projects and created jobs, and we are on an amazing trajectory,” said Senator Kaine. “Trump’s sham emergency threatens to screw all of that up. Why? Because he’d rather benefit Big Oil and suspend environmental protections than lower costs and create jobs for the American people. I hope my colleagues will join me in voting to terminate President Trump’s emergency.”

“America is producing more energy than ever before including both conventional and renewable sources. This is happening because of the year-over-year certainty Democrats created with tax structures and permitting that has allowed us to make solar, wind, and energy storage cheaper, faster, and less capital intensive to add to the electric grid. We made it possible to build big things in American once again,” said Senator Heinrich, Ranking Member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “But now, Trump’s fake emergency declaration is causing enormous uncertainty. If you’re thinking about opening a new factory, you don’t know what your tax structure will be in the next 12 months. If you’re trying to site and build a new transmission line, the federal agencies you work with just had a ton of their expert staff sacked, making it more difficult to get a permit. This is going to kill skilled trades jobs and drive up the cost of your electricity bills by as much at $480 a year by 2030. Trump’s war on affordable, American-made energy is killing jobs and raising costs on working families.”

“Trump falsely declared an energy emergency as a pretext to assert authority he lacks and to justify a raft of actions meant to lock us into decades more dependence on the fossil fuels that are driving the climate crisis. There is no energy emergency. There is a climate emergency. Trump’s actions will make it worse,” said Jackie Wong, Senior Vice President for Climate and Energy at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council).

“In the last four years, if you’re under 52, you’ve seen something happen for the first time in your adult life, which is America opening big new factories from coast to coast to give birth to big new industries,” said Ben Jealous, Executive Director of the Sierra Club. “Trump threatened the jobs of 77,000 workers in the wind industry on day one, sent shockwaves through their families and communities, and threatened to derail the United States from seizing the greatest economic opportunity on Planet Earth right now. Donald Trump’s objective here is to cut taxes and allow fossil fuel industries to continue to destroy beautiful places across this country in the interest of greed when we’ve got a better alternative. It’s time for our country’s people to rise up and demand the President of the United States put their interests first.”

“We are NOT in an energy emergency. In fact, Trump inherited a thriving clean energy economy with more than 400,000 new jobs and more cheaper and cleaner energy than ever before. Yet Trump and Musk are desperate to impound, freeze, and repeal the very clean energy investments that lower energy bills and create jobs – the majority of which are in districts currently represented by Republicans – so they can pay for tax cuts for their billionaire buddies. Trump and Musk are firing civil servants who help keep our electricity grid safe and secure and gutting clean energy industries that employ thousands of other workers. And Trump and Musk are threatening our air and water and pushing to open up our most precious public lands for permanent destruction so Trump can make good on his promise to Big Oil CEOs to drill, drill, drill,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, LCV SVP for Government Affairs.

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