Wright ordered a reversal of the pursuit of a “net-zero carbon future,” which was a key objective of the previous administration’s energy department.
Wright stated that net zero policies have done little to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, raised the cost of energy, jeopardized reliability, and harmed energy and national security.
Challenges confronting the new administration include the high price of gasoline, projected rising demand for electricity, insufficient generation capability, a deteriorating and antiquated transmission grid, and a depleted strategic petroleum reserve.
Trump has repeatedly declared that abundant, dependable, affordable, and clean energy is the United States’ biggest asset and the answer to many of the nation’s problems and needs.
The increased production and export of those energy assets is a main pillar of Trump’s economic plan.
Wright, a 60-year-old engineer and businessman with a background in mineral rights and royalties, fracking, and nuclear technology, wasted no time in directing his department’s 16,000 employees and 100,000 contract workers to get busy implementing the president’s vision for a new “Golden Age” based on U.S. energy dominance.
“Energy is the essential ingredient that enables everything we do,” Wright wrote in the preamble to the secretarial order issued on Feb. 5, two days after he was confirmed by the Senate.
Opponents Push Back
The Sierra Club, a national environmental advocacy group, was critical of the new agenda. Executive Director Ben Jealous wrote that the president’s actions “lay bare his determination to undermine the health and wealth of working families by polluting our air and water while ceding ground to China as he attempts to shutter the brand new factories powering our nation with clean energy.”“Making our communities more dangerous, driving up respiratory and heart disease, increasing our energy bills, and shipping our jobs overseas is the furthest thing from American leadership and the promises he made to support working-class families,” he wrote.
In contrast, the Department of Energy (DOE) secretary’s order stated, “Going forward, the department’s goal will be to unleash the great abundance of American energy,” which, he said, is “needed to power modern life.”
Wright stated that energy matters and “we need more of it, not less.”
A Broad Spectrum of Sources
To increase the supply of energy, the administration’s plan calls for the use of fossil fuels, geothermal energy, hydroelectric energy, and advanced nuclear energy.As part of that effort, the DOE has been ordered to rapidly deploy and even export the next generation of nuclear power technology.
Describing the federal permitting process as “burdensome,” Wright said the DOE will prioritize making permitting more efficient to enable private sector investors to build the diverse infrastructure needed.
Wright committed his department to identifying and expediting the approval and construction of projects that will “make energy more affordable, reliable, and secure.”
The DOE has been ordered to “remove barriers to progress, including federal policies that make it too easy to stop projects and far too difficult to complete projects.”
Strengthening the reliability and security of the U.S. power grid, including its transmission system, is mandated in the DOE order.
Regarding consumer appliances such as dishwashers and washing machines, the order stated, “The department will pursue a common-sense approach that does not regulate products that consumers value out of the market; instead, affordability and consumer choice will be our guiding light.”
Wright stated in the order that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) “must be refilled.”
“Unfortunately, the SPR is currently at historically low levels,“ he said. ”We will not permit this to become a new status quo.”
The order also mandates that the DOE ease restrictions on the export of liquified natural gas.
