U.S. Senator Steve Daines today secured a commitment from Trump’s Secretary of Energy nominee Chris Wright to support energy development in Montana and voiced his support for Wright’s confirmation in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing.
Watch Daines’ and Wright’s full exchange HERE.
Daines highlighted the importance of an all-of-above energy portfolio and asked for Wright’s commitment to support reliable, affordable sources of energy in Montana. Wright agreed.
Daines: One of the first things you can do as Secretary, I think, is to refocus the Department on pro-baseload energy policies. Baseload power resources like coal, natural gas, hydropower, nuclear, I think will ensure that we have access to reliable and affordable energy year-round, whether it rains or snows or the sun’s shining or not. The world needs more energy, not less, and with the proliferation of data centers… how does Google and Microsoft and others think about it right now, that they’re buying baseload power? They need to think about load power as a way…to fund what they need to do here as it relates to the revolution going on in AI, blockchain technologies, quantum computing… I think the 50 percent forecast…is probably low…And you can help us get ahead of that curve. So, here’s my question, Mr. Secretary-to-be, will you promote policies, both at DOE and throughout the government that will expand energy development and ensure that reliable and affordable base load sources of power are protected?
Wright: Absolutely, Senator. If I get the honor and the privilege to be confirmed and to serve, you just summarized the top goal. Our electricity grid, as I’ve said earlier in the testimony today, it’s become more expensive and less reliable, reversing a hundred-year trend where that was becoming cheaper in inflation-adjusted cost and more reliable, and we’ve gone the other direction. We cannot go that direction. That’s not good for America. It’s not good for our industries. And that is a top priority of mine to work on. I think we violently agree that reducing emissions is better through innovation, not regulation.
Daines and Wright also discussed the need to drive innovation to reduce emissions rather than imposing heavy-handed regulations:
Wright: If you look at the track record right now, almost all of the emission reductions in our country and across the globe, almost all of them have come from innovations. You know, in the United States, the biggest one by far has been the arrival of low-cost natural gas through the shale revolution. That was innovation, it was not imposed. We got low-cost gas, lower emission gas, not just lower greenhouse gas emissions, but lower pollutants, lower particulate matter, lower SOCs, lower NOx, that helps air quality. A lot of country emission reductions that have been from regulation and from top-down mandates have actually not been the emissions reductions they appear to be, they’ve more been an emissions removal. If you shut down industry in your country or in your state, the emissions from that industry don’t go away, they just go somewhere else. And if they go out of the United States with the cleanest and most advanced manufacturing technology, those emissions just go up. So really the only pathway to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and lift up people’s quality of life is through energy innovation, and America has been a hotbed of that, and we need to return a vigor and a focus on innovation, on energy, right here in this country.
Finally, Daines asked Wright to work together to support quantum and high-tech innovation:
Daines: Montana is becoming a quantum powerhouse and places like Bozeman, my hometown, are leading some of this high-tech innovation. We’ve got the Quantum Leadership Act that we’re working on to spur more jobs and research in this area. My question is, when confirmed, will you work with me to bolster quantum and other next-gen technologies?
Wright: Not only I will, more importantly this administration will. This administration and President-elect Trump is passionate about leading the next generation industries and leading them here in America.