Chris Wright: “We need more energy. Lots more energy.”
Here’s a partial transcript of Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s remarks this morning at the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston.
I got a last-minute media pass to the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston. Since I haven’t found an online transcript of Secretary Wright’s full remarks this morning, I transcribed them from a recording I did on my phone. Wright’s speech is a powerful rebuke of the Biden Administration’s energy policies. The Trump administration is, as he said, in the midst of a “180-degree pivot” from what we’ve seen over the last four years.
Please note that I missed the first minute or so of his speech. Also note I am making this piece free to all subscribers. The comment section is also open to all subscribers.
Wind and solar…
Today supply roughly 3% of global primary energy. You often hear larger numbers quoted, but that is because of a thermal equivalent scale-up. I don't believe that scale-up is justified, hence I stick with the actual energy produced. Everywhere wind and solar penetration have increased significantly, prices on the grid went up and stability of the grid went down.
Is this pathway really going to put natural gas in the rearview mirror?
Nitrogen fertilizer synthesized from natural gas is responsible for fully half of global food production. Natural gas is also the largest source of home heating in the United States. It is central to the rapidly growing petrochemical industry and the largest supplier of processed heat for manufacturing steel, cement, countless metals, gypsum, semiconductors, polysilicon, and thousands of other materials.
Oh yes, and natural gas is also responsible for 43% of US electricity.
Beyond the obvious scale and cost problems, there is simply no physical way that wind, solar and batteries could replace the myriad uses of natural gas. I haven't even mentioned oil or coal yet. I spent my whole career as an entrepreneur and student of energy. I have worked on nuclear, solar, oil, geothermal and natural gas. I was actively involved working in four of these energy technologies just a few weeks ago when I got my new job.
My new job rightfully necessitated that I depart and completely divest from all of my ventures in the energy business. I even resigned from my long-term board position with a free market environmental organization. But my passion for bettering human lives via improved access to energy is unwavering.
Recently, I've been called a climate denier or climate skeptic. This is simply wrong. I am a climate realist.
I've been studying, speaking, and writing about climate change for over 20 years. The Trump administration will treat climate change for what it is: a global physical phenomenon that is a side effect of building the modern world. We have indeed raised global atmospheric CO2 concentration by 50% in the process of more than doubling human life expectancy, lifting millions of the world's, lifting almost all of the world's citizens out of grinding poverty, launching modern medicine, telecommunications, planes, trains, and automobiles, too.
Everything in life involves trade-offs. Everything. Responses to climate change bring their own set of trade-offs. The Trump administration will end the Biden administration's irrational quasi-religious policies on climate change that imposed endless sacrifices on our citizens.
Running the math on what might have been the benefits from these policies yields perhaps only a few hundredths of a degree reduction in global temperatures in the year 2100. The Trump administration intends to be much more scientific and mathematically literate. The previous administration's climate policies have been impoverishing to our citizens, economically destructive to our businesses, and politically polarizing.
The cure was far more destructive than the disease.
There are no winners in that world, except for politicians and rapidly growing interest groups. The only interest group that we are concerned with is the American people. Our focus will be steadfast on the American people and our allies abroad.
Let's do a quick survey of energy access today. Roughly one billion people live lives remotely recognizable to us in this room. We wear fancy clothes, mostly made out of hydrocarbons. We travel in motorized transport. The extra lucky of us fly across the world to attend conferences. We heat our homes in winter, cool them in summer, store myriad foods in our freezers and refrigerators, and have light, communications and entertainment at the flip of a switch.
Pretty awesome.
This lifestyle requires an average of 13 barrels of oil per person per year. What about the other seven billion people? They want what we have. The other seven billion people, on average, consume only three barrels of oil per person per year versus our 13. Africans average less than one barrel.
We need more energy. Lots more energy. That much should be obvious.
Over half of people today are wearing hand-washed clothes. They have yet to realize the time-saving and women-liberating joys of a washing machine.
We need more energy.
Over two billion people today cook their daily meals and heat their homes burning wood. The indoor air pollution from this activity alone is estimated to kill over two million people annually.
We need more modern energy.
Two million readily preventable deaths. Where is the COP conference for this far more urgent global challenge?
Back in our own country, over 20% of Americans struggle to pay their energy bills and roughly 10% have received the utility disconnection notice in the last 12 months. Think about that for a moment. The last administration recklessly pursued policies that were certain to drive up electricity prices, knowing full well that millions of additional Americans would have to look in their kids' eyes and tell them that their lights might be going out. That sends a chill down my spine.
The expensive energy or climate policies that have been in vogue among the Left in wealthy Western nations have taken a heavy toll on their citizens. Making energy more expensive has impoverished citizens and displaced energy-intensive manufacturing along with the well-paying blue collar jobs.
Expensive energy policies do not reduce demand for energy intensive materials, they simply move where those products are produced and therefore who benefits from their production. China now consumes nearly three times as much energy in manufacturing than the United States. Three times.
We have outsourced far too much manufacturing and our allies in Europe have gone much further in this destructive direction. I find it sad and a bit ironic, that the once mighty steel and petrochemical industries of the United Kingdom have been displaced to Asia where the same products will be produced with higher greenhouse gas emissions, then loaded on a diesel-powered ship back to the United Kingdom. The net result is higher prices and fewer jobs for UK citizens, higher global greenhouse gas emissions, and all of this is termed a climate policy.
President Trump was elected to bring back common sense to Washington, DC. Let me hit a few of the highlights of America's common sense pivot in energy.
No more all-of-government approach to making energy more expensive, less reliable and making it nearly impossible to build large scale things in our country. We are unabashedly pursuing a policy of more American energy production and infrastructure, not less. Our goal is to re-industrialize America, not de-industrialize America.
President Trump immediately ended the pause on LNG export permits. Today, I can announce our fourth action in this regard, approving the Delfin Offshore Louisiana LNG export terminal.
This is in addition to previous actions on the Commonwealth and Golden Pass LNG projects, and our actions to enable the bunkering of LNG for powering tanker ships. Hard to believe there was opposition to these policies that so clearly benefit Americans, our allies, and our environment.
We are working to launch the long-awaited American nuclear renaissance, fission and fusion. The same goes for next generation geothermal energy. We want more reliable, affordable, secure energy. We are reversing policies that force consumers to pay more for clothes washers and dryers, hot water heaters and dishwashers that deliver inferior performance.
Our goal is lower cost and higher performance. Is that radical?
We also plan to reverse the destructive mandates, forcing everyone to buy EVs that have been wreaking havoc on our auto industry and forcing higher prices and reduced choices on consumers.
I could go on and on, but I'll end with a few words about AI.
AI is going to be truly transformative, many of the ways in which we can't even foresee today. We are already experiencing the impacts, the benefits in consumer services and education and also with business efficiencies. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Combining AI and quantum computing to drug discovery is likely to yield simply breathtaking results. The same is true for potential advancements in fusion energy, likely to be demonstrated during this administration.
I have been visiting our national laboratories, which are underappreciated gems in our country. The excitement is palpable to apply AI specifically for scientific advancement. AI impacts on national defense, both offensive and defensive, are likely also transformative. The implications on national defense make it simply critical that America leads the AI race. We have the talent, innovative spirit, and leading companies to win.
But all that won't matter if we can't deliver the energy. AI is an energy intensive manufacturing industry. It takes massive amounts of electricity to generate intelligence. The more energy invested, the more intelligence produced. Since the demand... for intelligence is unlimited, so will be the demand for energy. Over the last four years, American electricity prices rose by over 20%, with only about 2% demand growth.
Clearly, that trajectory is a train wreck waiting to happen. As we enter a period of rapid demand growth for electricity, our 180-degree pivot will have to work at warp speed to enable the needed growth in electricity supply without saddling consumers with ever rising electricity prices.
Consumers are rightly upset with the price rises over the last four years. This is a daunting challenge. Success will require significant regulatory changes, massive private capital deployment, and innovative partnerships. None of this will be possible without thoughtful, rational policies on energy and a truly honest assessment of climate change.
We are entering truly exciting times for human progress if we play our cards right, if we can get out of the way and unleash the human spirit. I look forward to working with all of you to better energize the world and fully unleash human potential.
Thank you.
Note: I corrected an error in the orginal transcription, which said two million people were cooking with firewood. The correct figure is two billion.
Before you go:
Please click that ♡ button, subscribe, and share.
I have opened the comment section on this piece to free and paid subscribers alike.
This speech is on the level of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. It won’t attract 100,000 people to hear it. Not many will understand it. But it is ground-breaking on that level. Energy is foundational to society; you would not be reading this but for an electrical device. The US now has a secretary of energy who has cared about it since he was a kid. He understands what it means for the US. But what is most important to him is that 2 million people die every year due to wood smoke pollution from their cooking. And half of the people in the world wear clothes that were washed by hand. He does not simply want Americans to prosper through their use of energy; he wants everyone to. Bravo, Mr. Secretary!
If we sited nuclear reactors at retired coal generation sites, we could increase our nuclear capacity by more than 300% with very little upgrades to transmission capacity. There are over 200 such locations, all of which are brownfield sites, have interties to the grid, have cooling water and happen to be located near load centers where the power is needed.