OREANDA-NEWS. January 19, 2017. State and local governments will play a bigger role in energy regulation but legislation will limit the new Trump administration from making sweeping changes to US environmental policy, Sutherland energy law attorney Jacob Dweck said today.

An aggressive Republican administration led by president-elect Donald Trump could make administrative changes to the biofuel mandates broadly loathed by the refining industry, Dweck told the Argus Crude Summit in Houston, Texas. It could also mean a halt to US advocacy on global greenhouse gas reductions.

Renewable energy growth would continue and other, more sweeping ideas, such as a restoration of the coal industry or a reopening Atlantic and Arctic offshore areas for drilling, would falter.

"Clearly, some of Trump's actions are going to be helpful to various sectors of the fossil fuel industry, but I don't believe they represent a fundamental redirection," Dweck said.

The new administration would likely reduce the mandated volume of biofuels refiners, importers and other companies would need to ensure enter the US fuel supply in 2018 under the Renewable Fuel Standard. Volumes have been repeatedly reduced by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the past four years as advanced biofuels production and gasoline demand both trail volumes assumed when Congress passed the current form of the Renewable Fuel Standard more than five years ago.

Other major ideas would require support from a Congress with which Trump already appears to be out of step.

Law cited by the departing Obama administration to close sections of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans off to offshore drilling was vague enough to require lengthy litigation to undo, Dweck said.

And the president-elect earlier this week criticized a signature tax reform that would pay for a corporate tax cut by increasing the cost of US imports. Such a proposal would roil US and global energy trade and almost certainly face retaliatory trade actions from other countries, he said.

The combination of a Trump administration and Republican Congress mean that so-called border tax idea would become a more common feature of tax reform discussions going forward, even if it may not pass soon, Dweck said.

"I think such a radical proposal really requires a lot more thought and analysis, and I think that's where we'll end up," Dweck said.