June 12, 2025 - President Donald Trump is a fan of fossil fuels who is determined to boost oil and gas and turn away from renewables — regardless of what some energy executives, fellow Republicans or even Elon Musk have to say on the matter, one of his top energy advisers said Tuesday.

“What I would say is the president is in charge,” said Jarrod Agen, a deputy assistant to the president and executive director of the White House’s National Energy Dominance Council, at POLITICO’s annual Energy Summit.

“The last thing we want is in the short term to have any problems with the grid,” he added.

Trump believes that fossil fuels got a “bad deal” under former President Joe Biden, and the current administration will continue to double down on traditional energy, Agen said. That is despite economic uncertainty brought on during Trump’s term that has roiled energy markets.

The shaky outlook for oil was punctuated Tuesday by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which predicted that domestic crude production will fall next year after U.S. oil reached record output under Biden.

Trump created the National Energy Dominance Council early in his second term, with goals of boosting energy production and reliability. Trump also campaigned on slashing energy costs, and he has taken credit for lower gasoline prices tied in part to an oil price slump associated with global economic worries.

Supporters have credited the energy council for a wide array of moves in the last five months, from aggressively accelerating environmental permits to opening up more land for drilling. But the council’s exact role in such actions remains unclear.

The council is something of a black box, with no public meetings. The group’s first director left weeks after joining the administration. And critics have questioned its usefulness.

Agen said the council operates with a startup culture and has a “tiger team” of about 10 staffers. Working out of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, he said, they coordinate energy policy across the federal bureaucracy and home in on specific projects, meeting with companies to understand what hurdles they face.

“We can serve as a voice in the White House that can call over to these different departments and say, ‘Hey, this is a priority, this is something the White House wants to get done, something the president wants to get done. What’s the hold up over there?’” Agen said.

Agen added that the council has experts in sectors ranging from oil and gas to pipelines, mining, critical minerals, electric grids and coal — but not solar.

“The president’s priorities are around turning around fossil fuels,” Agen said, specifying that the administration wants to see new natural gas pipelines in Alaska and in the Northeast, as well as natural gas facilities in the Gulf of Mexico, which Trump renamed the Gulf of America via executive order earlier this year.

Not focused on wind, solar

Agen’s comments Tuesday were a rare public look at the council’s staff and inner workings, which have largely been out of public view. And they clashed with some industry voices and technology executives, including Musk — the Tesla CEO and a former Trump adviser — who have argued that that the U.S. should strive to be a leader in clean energy innovation.

Agen joined Interior this year as a senior aide to Secretary Doug Burgum, who chairs the National Energy Dominance Council. Agen previously worked for former Vice President Mike Pence. He left a job at Lockheed Martin earlier this year, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Energy “dominance” has been a main theme of Trump’s second term, and he has wielded an emphasis on oil and gas to jettison clean energy programs and abandon climate goals.

The administration has ordered certain coal plants to remain open, pushed for drilling in untouched lands in northern Alaska and has cut permitting timelines for traditional energy projects from years down to days.

Earlier this month, Burgum, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin visited Alaska — along with Agen — to throw their support behind a planned natural gas pipeline that would cross the entire state. One goal of that project is potential gas exports to Asia.

Agen said his experience visiting the North Slope made him want more drilling in Alaska.

“These are massive, barren lands of snow and ice,” he said. “Where would we want to have the oil and gas come from? It’s there.”

Agen repeatedly dinged renewable energy Tuesday, despite its rapid growth in recent years and the push from numerous American allies to decarbonize in the face of looming scientific evidence of the harms from climate change.

Agen said renewables are supported by tax breaks and “can’t stand on their own feet.”

“The president is not focused on wind and solar,” he said. “They haven’t proven that they can get off the ground.”

Agen said nuclear power is a long-term priority for the administration, while increasing American energy production will help with trade conflicts.

“The more we can produce energy here and export it, that will be a huge benefit to us in these trade negotiations,” he said.