President Donald Trump holds up a signed executive order to advance construction of the Dakota Access pipeline, at the White House in Washington on January 24, 2017. Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

President Donald Trump set in motion a vast rollback of energy, climate and environmental regulations during his first two years in office. Over the next two years, those actions will face intense scrutiny on Capitol Hill. On Thursday, Democrats will take control of the House of Representatives and the committees that conduct government oversight. Within the first few months of the year, incoming committee chairs intend to hold a series of hearings to pick apart Trump's energy and environmental policies and what role industry insiders played in crafting them. The Trump administration has targeted dozens of rules. Some of the biggest items on its agenda include withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate agreement, expanding drilling on federal lands, and watering down rules ranging from limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants to fuel efficiency in cars and trucks. Rep. Raul Grijalva, the Arizona Democrat tipped to chair the House Natural Resources Committee, says Americans can expect the committee to probe the financial costs and public health risks associated with Interior Department policies under Trump. Those include rolling back methane emissions rules from oil and gas operations and making virtually all federally administered offshore waters available to drillers. "The Trump administration has spent two years giving away the store to fossil fuel companies, and Republicans in Congress cheered every step of the way," says Grijalva. "We need to know what kind of impact this corporate favoritism is having on average Americans' health and quality of life."

With House Republicans wielding committee gavels during the first two years of the Trump administration, the president's deregulatory agenda has proceeded with minimal scrutiny. Now, administration officials and energy industry executives are bracing for a grilling on Capitol Hill. "No one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition, which is what these guys are about to face," says Rich Gold, a partner at lobbying firm Holland & Knight, referencing the famous "Monty Python's Flying Circus" sketch.

Building a record to battle Trump

Gold, who heads his firm's public policy and regulation group, says the hearings create several opportunities for Democrats. First, they will bog down the administration in requests for information, leaving it less bandwidth to continue slashing regulations. Second, the hearings create an on-the-record account detailing how the administration developed its policies and who it consulted to craft its agenda. That record provides fodder for the many lawsuits aimed at defeating Trump's energy and environmental rollback. It can also be leveraged by Trump's challenger in the 2020 presidential contest to make the case that Trump put industry profits ahead of public health and climate action. The hearings also present an opportunity for Democrats to trip up administration officials and damage the administration's credibility, says Gold.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who will likely become speaker of the House, last week opened another avenue to scrutinize Trump's policies with the creation of the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. Trump rejects the consensus among climate scientists that global warming is primarily caused by human activity and presents an urgent threat to the world. He dismissed a recent report by his own administration that climate-related impacts could shave 10 percent off the U.S. economy by 2100. In a statement, Pelosi said, "The American people have demanded action to combat the climate crisis, which threatens our public health, our economy, our national security and the whole of God's creation."

Don't bet on big energy legislation

But with Congress divided and many Republicans still downplaying global warming risks, few Washington watchers expect much, if any, meaningful energy or climate legislation to emerge from Capitol Hill. "I don't have high expectations about legislation," says David Konisky, associate professor at Indiana University Bloomington's School of Public and Environmental Affairs. "I think most of the activity from the Democrats will be oversight of policy and activities inside the EPA and the Department of Interior." One area that could generate bipartisan support is carbon capture and storage, says Ben Finzel, president at Washington communications firm RenewPR. The technology strips carbon emissions from power plants and other industrial activity and sequesters it underground. The process has not been proven commercially viable at scale, but it is widely seen as critical to mitigating the impacts of climate change because developing nations around the world are still building coal plants. "The interesting thing about carbon capture is that it really is bipartisan and there are folks on both sides of the aisle in both chambers that like the concept of addressing at least a piece of energy policy, whether it be jobs or emissions reduction or technology innovation," says Finzel, whose clients include the Carbon Capture Coalition, which advocates for the technology.