“There remains much to do in 2018. But the crony energies–those dependent on special government favor–are on notice that their time may be running short. Consumers and taxpayers come first in a free and prosperous commonwealth.”

It has been a good year for the master resource and public policy in the United States. The Trump reset of energy and climate policy has been the most dramatic in history in terms of free-market orientation. Trump’s reversing the Obama administration if what Ronald Reagan did to the Carter Administration’s energy policy back in 1981–but more so.

At yesterday’s White House briefing, Sarah Huckabee Sanders reviewed some of the energy highlights of the year.

“As December winds down,’ she said, “I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to look back at what has been, by any measure, a historic year.” She continued:

Nearly 1.7 million new jobs have been created, and the unemployment rate has fallen to 4.1 percent, the lowest rate in 17 years. The stock market reached a record high more than 60 times and closed above 24,000 for the first time in history.

• We’ve rolled back twenty-two regulations for every one new regulation, saving taxpayers over $8 billion and liberating America’s economy from the grip of bloated government….

• We finally set up our nation on a path to not only energy independence, but energy dominance.

• We approved the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, directed the EPA to end the job-killing war on coal, and upon the tax bill’s passage, will have opened up ANWR to responsible energy exploration.

The President has delivered on promise after promise, issue after issue, time after time, and we’re just getting started.

There certainly were disappointments in 2017, and none greater than the ‘swamp’ winning with the political energies of ethanol, wind power, solar power, and electric vehicles. The ethanol mandate survived a scare, as did a cutback of wind tax preferences in the just-passed tax overhaul.

Conclusion

There remains much to do in 2018. But the crony energies–those dependent on special government favor–are on notice that their time may be running short. Consumers and taxpayers come first in a free and prosperous commonwealth.

Here’s to a week of not thinking about energy (MasterResource will be ‘on vacation’) and more energy-policy victories in the year ahead.