100+ Fossil Fuel Insiders & Far-Right Ideologues Prop Up Dirty Energy, Plunder Public Lands, and Thwart Wind & Solar
Introduction
President Donald Trump has spent the last nine months halting the growth of the American clean energy economy in its tracks, dragging the country into a vengeful, backward-leaning energy agenda that does the bidding of his fossil fuel allies and serves the interest of billionaire campaign donors. Consumers and the planet alike will suffer for it.
In recent years, the U.S. has made huge strides in laying the groundwork for a decarbonized economy. Under former President Joe Biden, the adoption of technologies such as electric vehicles, solar power, and battery storage accelerated quickly as the cost of green energy plunged. Now, however, the fossil fuel industry has tightened its control on Washington and is actively working to derail the clean energy transition.
Ironically, the Biden era also saw massive amounts of fossil fuel production and drove huge profit margins for oil companies in the United States. Indeed, no country in world history has produced more oil than the U.S., and domestic production of natural gas is at record levels. Ignoring the data, Trump and his oil and gas industry backers continue to distort the history of the Biden administration to be one of an intense fossil fuel crackdown, a convenient excuse to turn back the clock to a fossil-fueled energy policy that puts America at a disadvantage even as the rest of the world electrifies.
Trump’s domestic policy and tax legislation, passed in July 2025, ends support for renewable and clean energy manufacturing while providing new subsidies and tax breaks to the already heavily subsidized fossil fuel industry. This overt fossil-favoritism signals an end to even the pretense of an “all of the above energy strategy” that alleges to promote both fossil fuels and renewables — a favorite talking point of trade groups, centrist pundits and corporate lobbyists.
Amid a far-reaching retreat from a clean energy economy, Trump and his allies also are fighting to put our public lands up for sale. From removing protections for national forest lands, to attacking national monuments, to opening new drilling opportunities for oil in the Alaskan Arctic, the Trump administration seems intent on handing our public lands to extractive industries, no matter the cost to the public.
As a result, this report seeks to examine the environmentally deleterious policies pursued by this administration, and the corporate cronies instituting them, in three key arenas: the massive expansion of polluting energy, the destruction of public lands, and the sabotage and suppression of renewable energy.
Key Findings
Public Citizen and the Revolving Door Project analyzed the backgrounds of 111 executive branch nominees and appointees (Chart 1) charged with the nation’s energy and environmental policymaking. The analysis found that President Trump has installed fossil fuel insiders and renewable energy opponents across nine agencies (Chart 2) that implicate energy and environmental policy.
These agencies have made dozens of hires from the fossil fuel sector, mining conglomerates, and other polluting industries, as well as others who are well-paid to support a dirty energy agenda, such as corporate lawyers and the staffers from far right think tanks directly tied to Trump’s dirty energy agenda. As part of our compilation, we also included Republican politicians and political operatives who have attached themselves to MAGA’s dirty energy agenda. That includes:
- 43 former fossil fuel industry employees
- 29 former corporate executives
- 14 former corporate lawyers
- 12 people tied to fossil fuel-funded right-wing think tanks
- 7 people tied primarily to Republican politics such as elected officials and staffers pushing fossil fuel interests
- 6 from utility companies or the nuclear energy industry
We relied on data pulled from the Office of Personnel Management’s Plum Book, data appearing on Congress.gov, and surveys of personnel-related news reporting. Our list includes officials (both nominated and appointed) whose work includes environmental and energy policy, even if such policy oversight is only a part of their role or agency. We examined the backgrounds of staffers, political appointees, and nominees not yet confirmed across nine federal agencies who have worked in the second Trump administration, including officials who have since left the government. We did not include withdrawn nominations or junior-level hires. See the full list here (Appendix 1).
We used “Republican politics” as a category for Trump officials who have primarily spent their professional careers as GOP elected officials or staffers, but do not have a corporate or think tank background. Some of those included are former elected officials who received campaign contributions from polluting interests. Others have taken actions that benefitted polluting industries while serving in Congress, state government or other public offices.
We also examined all 37 Senate-confirmable nominees to three agencies — the Energy Department, Environmental Protection Agency and Interior Department. Our analysis of this smaller subset of officials at key agencies found that 25 of those — more than two thirds — had polluter ties, while only 12 did not. As of publication of this report, there was no current nominee for 15 key spots, according to our analysis of Congress.gov. .See the full list here (Appendix 2).
Besides revolving door corporate nominees and appointees, we found numerous examples of Trump administration hires serving in, or nominated for, high positions with little, if any, subject matter expertise. Many have political connections, experience in other fields or experience with marketing, public relations and public speaking. For example:
- A key White House aide coordinating energy policy worked for Vice President Mike Pence and Lockheed Martin but appears to have no energy industry or policy experience.
- A nominee to a top federal energy regulator overseeing electricity markets and pipelines has no energy policy experience.
- The Environmental Protection Agency’s new general counsel acknowledged in his confirmation hearing that he worked for a regional law firm, was fired after 18 months, and has scant experience practicing the law.
- The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is now led on an acting basis by a former investment banker from Texas who ran the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Commission.
- The Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup official is a Colorado real estate developer with no nuclear cleanup experience.
- An adviser in the Interior Department’s policy and budget office appears to have no qualification except for his childhood friendship with former presidential candidate and Trump ally, Vivek Ramaswamy.
- A nominee to an Energy Department position overseeing energy efficiency and renewables is an oil and gas executive with seemingly no renewable energy experience.