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Planners may need to get used to “playing by a different sustainability playbook” and adapting their environmental expectations on a state-by-state basis, said Tommy Goodwin. (Adobe Stock)
Tommy Goodwin
Many of Donald Trump’s plans for his second term as president are still taking shape, but the business events industry can get a sense of what to expect from his first term and immediate executive orders, as well as promises made during his 2024 campaign. In December, Convene asked Tommy Goodwin, vice president of Exhibitions & Conferences Alliance (ECA) to break down Trump’s anticipated impact on events and ECA’s top priorities over the next four years of his term.
According to Goodwin, there are several key areas he and ECA will be keeping an eye on as the second Trump presidency unfolds. Here is what Goodwin shared regarding sustainability:
Event organizers can expect conversations around sustainability to be reshaped under the Trump administration. Trump has already signed an executive order to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement, terminated a series of policies to bolster green jobs and limit pollution, and declared a national energy emergency to ramp up production of domestic fossil fuels. According to Goodwin, sustainability actions on a federal level could fracture how the climate crisis is handled in different parts of the country.
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“In the first Trump administration, states and cities did a lot of work on the backend trying to keep up some of those climate commitments,” he said. For example, California mandated that after 2035, “you can’t buy cars that are just solely powered by gas,” Goodwin said. Similarly, California is banning the sale of internal combustion forklifts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions beginning in 2026, which could change event setup in that state moving forward — battery-operated forklifts, Goodwin noted, only operate for eight hours with a four-hour cooldown period and an eight-hour recharge period, vs. a propane-powered forklift’s 14- to 16-hour operating window. “You’ve got people looking at California thinking, ‘If the venue gives us a 36-hour move-in window, can we actually hit it?’” But planners may need to get used to “playing by a different sustainability playbook” and adapting their environmental expectations on a state-by-state basis, Goodwin said.
“There are a handful of blue states that are controlled by Democratic governors and state legislatures. If the Trump administration goes big on deregulation, I would look at those states as being potentially aggressive on new regulations,” Goodwin said. “Sustainability and decarbonization becomes like almost a choose-your-own-adventure type of situation.” It complicates the planning process for events that are held in a different destination every year, Goodwin said. “I know there are a lot of general service contractors and others who definitely have a big concern about that — about it driving up costs, driving up compliance. When you think about all the planners and service providers who’ve signed up to be net zero by 2050, this could make that really complicated.”
Casey Gale is managing editor of Convene.