CNBC's full interview with Energy Secretary Chris Wright

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Joining us right now on set before he heads to the UN later today is United States Energy Secretary Chris Wright and we're thrilled to have him at the table. Good morning to you. Great to be here, Andrew. Feels like we're going through an energy renaissance in this country in so many different ways, a lot of it driven by AI. How much of this is an AI boom versus something [00:00:19] Chris Wright: else? Well, the AI boom is for the electricity sector. We haven't had much growth there in a while. That's the biggest driver of growth in electricity. Reshoring and manufacturing will drive that too. But a huge part of the growth in American energy is for exports to our allies in Europe and Asia around the world. And that's separate from AI. And that's separate from AI. [00:00:38] Speaker 1: So how much are you thinking right now about what the new sort of configuration, given all the things that the administration is trying to do in terms of bringing back certain business to the U.S., what the energy requirements ultimately look like? I guess in simple numbers, we think we need to add [00:00:55] Chris Wright: 100 gigawatts of new firm capacity in the next five years. And when we arrived, when President Trump arrived in office, the plans and in queues was to close 100 gigawatts, mostly of coal, a little bit of natural gas, and only add 22 gigawatts of firm capacity. So a net reduction of about 80 gigawatts. So instead of minus 80, we got to go to plus 100. [00:01:19] Speaker 3: President poured a lot of cold water on climate week yesterday, Mr. Secretary. I'm sorry to break that news to you. I think he called it a green news scam or but but really piled on on what he obviously thinks is not as pressing an issue as we've been led to believe. I guess I'm leading to to a report that you commissioned and Steve Coonan, who was Obama's guy in science, has written about it that the public perception of climate change and actual climate science is totally diverged at this point. It's not even in the same world. [00:01:58] Chris Wright: It's amazing how wide that divergence is. I've been involved, studying, engaging in the climate dialogue for over 20 years. Early on in my career, shale gas pioneer, right? Biggest driver of reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Also had technologies to monitor CO2 sequestration. Wow, if climate change is a huge deal, it's going to be great for my future business. But the more you dive into it, it's a very real physical phenomenon, but not remotely close to one of the world's biggest problems today. It's been used by politicians and activists to claim it is, call it a crisis, but that's simply divorced from the reality of the data. I mean, some of the findings, I don't, [00:02:35] Speaker 3: it was in this piece in the journal, the op-ed piece from Obama's guy, Steve Coonan. Complex climate models provide limited guidance on the climate's response to rising carbon dioxide. Data aggregated over the continental U.S. show no significant long-term trend in the most extreme weather events. The IPCC, their sixth annual summary of things, they admitted that they can't tie carbon dioxide to increased weather, adverse weather events. They admitted right there. Exactly. It's always been in [00:03:11] Chris Wright: the data that there's not been a pattern. The only extreme weather event with a little bit of a trend is tornadoes, and they're going down. Heat waves, of course, are going up a little bit because the world is becoming a little bit warmer. But yeah, this whole use of scaring children and claiming urgent [00:03:27] Speaker 3: action. People don't want to have kids because they don't want to bring kids in. And they definitely don't want to take Tylenol when they're pregnant. That's what I was going to get you to, that if you look at some of the things that come out of RFK's HHS in terms of science, that, I would say, undercuts some of the Trump administration. They'll say that your science in terms of global warming or climate hysteria, they will say that it's two sides of the same coin, that it's not science-based. [00:03:55] Chris Wright: Yeah. On the energy and climate side, I can guarantee you it is science-based. Look, I'm a tech nerd, science guy my entire life. And we commissioned that report, and I've been out talking about climate change based on data and facts. Just like everything in life, it's about trade-offs. [00:04:10] Speaker 1: Well, that's what I was going to ask you about. Let's just talk about the trade-offs. I think that's... By the way, I agree with you. It's a trade-off story. And the question is, we need a certain amount of energy to be able to grow our economy and do all the things we need to do. The question is, do you believe 20, 30, 40, 50 years, I don't know, hopefully we can live a very long time, that from a science perspective, we're going to care about CO2? Meaning, you may say to yourself, right now, given the trade-offs, you need coal or you need fossil fuel, whatever. Right? I'm with you. I'm with you there. However, there could be a time, I think in a perfect... I guess the question is, in a perfect world, would you try to use energy sources that don't create [00:04:52] Chris Wright: the CO2 issue? Oh, I think so. Absolutely. You do? Absolutely. Yeah. I don't think so. We will... We will... We can eventually decarbonize the world. But that's generations away. And decarbonize the world through technology? [00:05:07] Speaker 3: Absolutely, through technology. Chris, if you're arguing that there's no discernible effect, why would you... If it's a phantom menace, in your view right now, then why give credence to the idea that you want to... That whole word, decarbonize it, we're at 0.04% CO2. It's been 20 times higher in the past when it wasn't warm. So, I mean, the whole idea, the whole linkage between that and adverse weather has not... It's [00:05:32] Chris Wright: not proven. It's not at all for adverse weather. And you don't expect it to be either. Weather's driven by gradients. The poles are warming more than the equator. So the gradients are actually shrinking. So yeah, do I think it's a huge threat for the world? No. But it does absorb infrared radiation. It is contributing to warming. The world is greener. The world is greener. The world's a little bit wetter, a little bit greener. In general, a better place to be. But in the long run, if you look out a thousand years, nuclear energy is going to become a huge energy source. And in the way distant future, we'll likely use nuclear energy to produce hydrocarbons. You can't have a modern world without extensive use of hydrocarbons. [00:06:09] Speaker 1: So what's it going to take to actually get there? And what... In terms of nuclear, I mean, that's been the holy grail of energy. If we could just get nuclear to actually work and feel safe, and people being willing to have it in their neighborhoods, that we could change this entire dynamic. [00:06:24] Chris Wright: So I don't think you can change the entire dynamic, because nuclear, at the turn of the century, was 6.5% of global energy. Today, it's about 5. If we can reverse that trend, get it growing again, get it growing fast, it might be 10% of global energy in the year 2050. Energy systems move slowly. Wind, solar, and batteries, 2.6% of global energy. They're not going anywhere. They'll never get to double digits. So nuclear can be bigger. Fusion's coming along. But these things will move slowly. The belief... Think of the Biden administration. They wanted to stand in front of fossil fuel production in the United States. They did nothing to change the world dependence on hydrocarbons. They just drove up the prices. Good for the 1% in the industry, but bad for the other 100%. [00:07:09] Speaker 1: Talking about driving up the prices, we started by talking about AI and just this big boom. There is a concern in some states already, where there is a real effort to bring AI and AI data centers into these states, that the end result is actually driving up the cost of energy for the [00:07:26] Chris Wright: ordinary American. So it is a balance. But ultimately, AI done correctly, and that's what our whole thing, bring common sense, bring data. We're not this crazy alarmist band. But we can deliver AI and stop the rise in electricity prices. It takes some time because we've been digging a hole, make it very hard to produce firm capacity. Let me give you one example. Google signed a deal with Georgia Power and Light, biggest utility in Georgia, to build a huge data center there. And with the way they're going to fund it, Georgia Power and Light locked in their rates for three years, no increases. The ultimate impact of AI should be able to make our grid more secure and actually lower the average [00:08:06] Speaker 1: delivery costs. So one of the things that people critique in the AI space is they say, look, all of these data centers and tech guys are saying, if we're going to build this, you, the energy companies, are going to have to, you know, provide 99.999% uptime, meaning that we get prioritized energy relative to everybody else. And, you know, there's this question, the hurricane happens, something else happens. Who is going to get the energy first? Oh, consumers will always get the energy first. [00:08:36] Chris Wright: But what, how you get to all those nines for the data centers is backup generators. Right now, there's backup generators all over the country and silly EPA rules prevent us from using those backup generators. When the electricity grid, people keep saying we need more electrons in the grid. That's not how electricity works. The only time we have a shortage of electrons is at peak demand time. We're going to, again, bring some common sense. So let's turn on all the backup generators that are sitting there at data centers today and at other critical facilities and turn them on when we get near peak demand to keep our grid robust. Common sense will help us deliver more data center, more electricity and lower the cost. But four years of careening down the wrong road is going to [00:09:18] Speaker 3: take some time to reverse. Is the endangerment finding on CO2 that it sort of, it set back utilities, it set back a lot of different industries. And it was based on the idea that you could say that CO2 is pollution because down the road you'd have increased weather events. You just said that there has been no linkage between the two. Is the endangerment finding, number one, it was preposterous when it started in an overreach, but it's still not gone. Is it, is it in the courts? [00:09:45] Chris Wright: Well, we're, the EPA is working on a rule and they're going to, decision will come out. And if they decide to remove the endangerment finding, which I personally believe the data overwhelmingly supports, get rid of the endangerment finding. Talking about extreme weather, deaths from extreme weather on a hundred year plunge. It's never been a safer time to be alive from extreme weather. So then it'll be challenged in the courts. The cold's a lot worse than hot too, [00:10:07] Speaker 3: for what kills people. Five times more people die from the cold than die from the heat. Well, it's causing that too. The global warming causes the coldness. Everything in weather is climate change. Hot, dry, warm, wet year. [00:10:18] Chris Wright: But yeah, it'll be litigated, of course. But that's exactly what we want, is discussing these energy climate trade-offs in a public setting. But yes, it enabled the Clean Power Plan, which started the rise in electricity prices that has everyone angry [00:10:31] Speaker 3: today. Meanwhile, there's plastic building up on beaches in Africa that have never been seen by humans. And there's 50 yards of disgusting plastic and particulate pollution and chemical waste and nuclear waste. And there's not enough fish. There's so many things. You could be such a great [00:10:48] Chris Wright: environmentalist if you knew what you were talking about. The funny thing is, I predict in a few years, President Trump will win the Climate Hero Award because his policies, which is pro-natural gas and pro-nuclear, those are the only two needle movers we have today to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He's not doing it for that reason. You're right. That's not, that's nowhere near our [00:11:11] Speaker 3: biggest issue. Let's get the plastic out of the ocean. Leave the CO2. It's a longer conversation. [00:11:17] Speaker 1: Mr. Secretary, thank you for joining us this morning.