Texas oil billionaires are pumping millions into Trump's campaign. Here's what they want to do
WASHINGTON — Almost four years after former President Donald Trump left the White House, Tim Dunn, Kelcy Warren and other Texas oil billionaires are pumping millions of dollars into his campaign to return at a time climate change poses an existential crisis to the future of their industry.
In their sights are Democratic policies such as the $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicles, tougher emissions standards on cars and trucks, and incentives for homeowners to switch from gas appliances to electric models, all of which Trump has attacked with the promise of a new “Drill, Baby, Drill” ethos aimed at increasing oil and gas production in Texas and elsewhere.
But how far Trump could go in his quest to undo the clean energy policies of the Biden administration is a question mark amid the political realities of Washington, where many Republican politicians’ home states are the beneficiaries of Biden’s clean energy spending.
In August, 18 Republican House members sent a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., warning that repealing the clean energy tax credits created under the Inflation Reduction Act would “undermine private investments and stop development that is already ongoing.”
“For every one Republican that signed that letter there’s another two or three that generally agreed with the proposition but didn’t feel they were in a position to sign it,” said Scott Segal, a Washington energy attorney. “It’s becoming clearer there is stronger Republican support for continued clean energy incentives than was first suspected.”
In Texas, for instance, more than $150 billion in projects have been announced under the Biden administration, largely to take advantage of tax incentives and federal funding created by the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Projects include a $120 million battery plant in La Porte and a $6 billion sustainable aviation fuel plant near Odessa.
More funding is likely coming, as oil and gas companies partner with technology businesses to develop clean hydrogen projects in and around Houston through a federal hydrogen hub program worth as much as $1.2 billion for Texas, as well as multibillion-dollar carbon capture and storage projects being developed along the Gulf Coast by the likes of Exxon Mobil and Chevron.
What a second Trump administration would do on those tax incentives is unclear, but a number of former Trump officials have been calling for their end.
In the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 report, top energy and environment officials from the first Trump administration called for doing away with clean energy subsidies, including the carbon capture tax credit driving projects along the Gulf Coast, and preventing the Energy Department from issuing loans to develop new technologies.
Instead, they called for a return to Trump’s “energy dominance” policies, with more coal mining and offshore drilling, as well as eliminating the enforcement division of the Environmental Protection Agency, which they accused of “vendetta-driven enforcement” and “mischaracterizing the state of our environment generally and the actual harms reasonably attributable to climate change.”
Diana Furchtgott Roth, a deputy assistant transportation secretary under Trump who now works at Heritage, said she expected Trump to do away with new emissions standards forcing auto manufacturers to shift towards EVs.
“There’s going to be no point building all these EV and battery plants,” she said. “The red states — and blue states for that matter — they’re not going to want to have white elephants on their hands.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment, but Trump has pushed back against Project 2025, saying he played no role in its creation and opposing the authors' call for a nationwide ban on abortion.
And he has at times stepped back from his earlier opposition to EVs, saying earlier this month after Tesla CEO Elon Musk offered him an endorsement, “I’m for electric cars. I have to be, because Elon endorsed me very strongly. So I have no choice.”
Two weeks later, he said he was considering ending the EV tax credit, telling Reuters, “tax credits and tax incentives are not generally a very good thing.”
That’s a stark contrast from Vice President Kamala Harris, who has sought to thread the needle on energy and climate policy, telling CNN in an interview Thursday that she would not support a fracking ban while also promising to continue the clean energy policies of the Biden administration.
“She’s shown throughout her career shes going to take on big oil and polluters,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president for government affairs at the League for Conservation Voters. “Were Trump reelected, it would be no holds barred. It would be devastating to all the progress we’ve made through the IRA and the infrastructure law.”
Were Trump to try to undo Biden’s clean energy programs, getting support in Congress could prove a challenging proposition. With the recent onslaught of heat waves, wildfires, violent thunderstorms and flooding — of which Texas has been at the epicenter — Americans are growing increasingly wary on climate.
In a Yale University poll late last year, 72% of Americans said they were worried about global warming. And Republicans in Congress are more active on climate and clean energy than they were in the past, with a group that includes Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Houston, calling for a “conservative approach to climate” that includes funding for technologies such as carbon capture.
“There’s political realities at play here,” said Segal, the energy attorney. “I don’t foresee a sea change in energy incentives. If Republicans were to try to yank the bathmat out of capital intensive projects, that is the equivalent of raising taxes on capital projects. That doesn’t have a very Republican ring to it.”
Behind closed doors, former president Donald Trump and his advisers have been talking for months about forming a commission led by prominent business executives to comb through the government books to identify thousands of programs to cut.
Lately, one particularly famous candidate has made clear he’d be up for it: Elon Musk. And he may have much to gain personally from the endeavor.
On several occasions, including on X, the social media platform he owns, the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive has expressed interest in being part of a “government efficiency commission” aimed at eliminating wasteful regulations and spending. Musk in August posted an apparently artificial intelligence-generated image of himself behind a lectern labeled “Department of Government Efficiency,” with the acronym DOGE — a meme-based cryptocurrency Musk has previously embraced.
Musk’s potential involvement in a government regulatory and spending commission has sparked concerns from ethics experts who point to conflicts of interest that could emerge between such a post and his business empire. But Trump advisers are eager to bring in prominent corporate leaders to compile a high-profile list of federal excess, reprising efforts similar to those led by President Ronald Reagan and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who once published an annual “Waste Book” on allegedly frivolous spending.
Musk has increasingly used X as a megaphone to support Trump and bash his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. But as the two billionaires have moved into a closer political alliance, scrutiny is mounting over the potential financial benefits a potential second Trump administration could deliver to Musk.
Musk has now fully embraced Trump. He helped create a SuperPAC, America PAC, in support of the Republican candidate, which has raised at least $8.7 million from wealthy donors — including former Tesla board member Antonio Gracias, Palantir co-founder and Austin-based tech investor Joe Lonsdale, and Sequoia Capital investor Shaun Maguire — as of June 30, the most recent date for which public filings are available.
Tesla has been paid $36 million in federal funds to install at least 328 EV charging plugs, according to policy and data research firm Atlas Public Policy. SpaceX won a NASA contract in 2021 worth up to $4.4 billion to build a human landing system for the Artemis moon missions. The company has already received $2.2 billion under the agreement in taxpayer money.
“It raises questions that the commission’s focus is on saving taxpayer dollars, but you have someone potentially involved whose company is one of the biggest recipients of federal spending,” said Anna Massoglia, a money in politics expert at the nonprofit organization OpenSecrets. “Cracking down on government waste and abuse is important, but we also need to have accountability mechanisms so private sector actors involved in this kind of program can’t manipulate it for personal gain.”
Trump’s interest in the commission is partly a response to a political and substantive problem facing his campaign — the GOP presidential nominee’s plans might inflate the national debt. He has pushed several trillions of dollars in additional tax cuts for his second term, and proposed nowhere near that amount in new revenue.
