Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told reporters the federal government should get out of the energy business and let free markets work.
“We’ve got to get rid of some of these regulations,” Trump said at an event Thursday in Bismarck, North Dakota — America’s number two oil producing state. “It’s gotten out of control.”
Trump also took the time to blast Democratic candidate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for saying her policies would put coal miners out of work. He also said he would approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline and take some of the project’s profits.
“That’s how we’re going to make our country rich again,” he said.
Trump was in North Dakota Thursday to talk about energy policy at the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference. Trump recently named North Dakota Rep. Kevin Cramer as his energy policy adviser.
Trump said he wants to make America energy independent, in part, by removing regulations hampering coal, gas and oil production. That stands in sharp contrast to Clinton and her Democratic opponent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Clinton’s and Sanders’ energy policies have largely focused on fighting global warming and promoting green energy projects rather than energy independence and boosting fossil fuels. Sanders, in fact, wants Americans to get 50 percent of their energy from green sources, and Hillary wants to build half a billion solar panels by the end of her first term.
“Through these goals, we will increase the amount of installed solar capacity by 700% by 2020, expand renewable energy to at least a third of all electricity generation, prevent thousands of premature deaths and tens of thousands of asthma attacks each year, and put our country on a path to achieve deep emission reductions by 2050,” Clinton’s website boasts.
