Low bar, but Secretary of Energy Chris Wright is probably the smartest guy in Trump’s cabinet. That’s one reason why I find him to be such a detestable figure, because he knows he’s lying, and, like Trump, he lies when he doesn’t even have to.
The interview with Wright, above, focused on new plans for a billion dollar loan to rehab the Three Mile Island Nuclear plant. I wish them luck, truly. But then Wright got unnecessarily wayyy out over is skis.
“People are tired of expensive electricity prices, and the Trump administration is all in to do something about it.”
“There are no meaningful subsidies for fossil fuels.”
David Gelles in the New York Times:
But when I asked Wright, a former fracking executive, about the government’s support for fossil fuels, he said there was none.
“There are not oil and gas subsidies,” he told me. “In the United States, oil and gas and coal are huge taxpayers and don’t have any subsidies that I’m aware of. And I’ve been in the business for 40 years. So if you can find the subsidies, tell me where they are.”
But, despite Wright’s claim, fossil fuel companies have benefited from specific elements of the U.S. tax code for decades.
Coal, oil and gas interests in the U.S. received more than $16 billion in subsidies in 2023, according to the Fossil Fuel Subsidy Tracker, which is maintained by the International Institute for Sustainable Development and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Despite facing macro challenges and headwinds, utility-scale solar and onshore wind remain the most cost-effective forms of new-build energy generation on an unsubsidized basis (i.e., without tax subsidies). As such, renewable energy will continue to play a key role in the buildout of new power generation in the U.S. as the lowest-cost and quickest-to-deploy generation.
While restarting nuclear plants and increasing the production capacity of existing plants are much more cost effective than SMRs and could satisfy some near-term demand needs, they would not be able to provide enough meaningful new supply to data centres given that only a handful of facilities were in a position to reopen, said Muthiah.
The future of nuclear power now relies on emerging technologies such as SMRs, which have yet to reach operation in the US and whose costs and viability are still unknown to investors.
Developer NuScale cancelled what would have been the first SMR project in the US in 2023 after not enough buyers signed up for its power. Oklo, another SMR developer, pushed back the date of the first deployment of its nuclear reactor from late 2027 to early 2028.
The Trump administration wants to churn dirt on a bevy of new nuclear power plants.
Electric utilities that power America have different plans.
Despite forecasts for spiking electricity use and pledges from the Department of Energy to bolster nuclear power, utilities aren’t inking contracts to build new plants with the large-scale, light-water reactors that have fueled American homes and businesses for decades.
“I wouldn’t build a nuclear plant,” Calvin Butler, CEO of Exelon, a major U.S. utility that doesn’t produce power but is aiming to do so in the future, told CNBC last week. “What I could do is lean in on combined-cycle gas turbines. What I could do is build community solar. What I could do is own battery storage.”
Duke Energy, a major utility in the Southeast, is now hedging after laying out loose plans in October to produce more than a gigawatt of new nuclear power by 2037.
“We still need to figure out what we’re going to do with cost overrun protection and how we’re going to protect our investors and our customers from overruns,” Duke CEO Harry Sideris said on an earnings call earlier this month. “Nothing going forward until we have those other items resolved.”
That hesitation is throttling Trump administration plans to reassert U.S. nuclear leadership globally — and to ensure there is enough power in the U.S. to win the artificial intelligence race with China. Experts say new builds are important drivers of industry advancement that will cut costs and boost innovation. They’re also needed to keep powering America with nuclear energy, as many of the 94 reactors in the U.S. near retirement.
“There’s not a single company out there talking about a brand new light water reactor, and that’s where the administration gets frustrated,” an energy lobbyist, who has close ties to administration and was granted anonymity to speak freely, told POLITICO’s E&E News. “The administration is a little tone deaf in understanding the trepidations from a Wall Street standpoint.”
The utility sector is grappling with a laundry list of nuclear concerns. It’s worried about high costs, hits to balance sheets and the availability of enriched uranium in the U.S. following a cut-off from Russian imports in 2028. Utility CEOs are also skeptical that the capital-intensive power will be needed if demand forecasts contract.
Duke Energy 2025 Integrated Resource Plan:
Given the substantial upfront capital investment required for deployment of new nuclear generation (relative to other types of generation), support will be required in the form of cost overrun protection, which currently does not exist, or other cost mitigation measures. Units 3 and 4 at Plant Vogtle were the first advanced reactor LLWR projects in the U.S. with two AP1000® units constructed and placed into commercial operation. The Vogtle project experienced significant delays and cost overrun, with the total cost more than double the original projected cost. Though some issues were unique to that
project, the first and second movers for the next advanced reactor projects will be assumingconstruction risks and therefore will need some form of insurance to protect customers.
It is essential that the current tax credits that incentivize new nuclear generation remain in place, as they provide critical financial support for these investments and decrease investment risk, which will lead to lower overall costs for customers. In addition, the current tax credits that incentivize the efficient operation of the existing nuclear fleet are also essential, as they help keep energy prices low, with every dollar going back to customers.
In sum, without continued federal support, the financial risk of nuclear construction could deter development, slowing, delaying, or eliminating progress despite the substantial potential benefits of new nuclear generation for customers.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal recently reported on the controversy over the administration’s ordering utilities to keep an obsolete, polluting coal plant open in Michigan – possibly a template for other aging plants around the country, to be subsidized by captive rate payers.
President Trump this year declared a grid-reliability emergency, citing surging electricity demand for artificial intelligence and new manufacturing. The Energy Department ordered the Campbell plant to stay open, along with another in Pennsylvania. Industry experts expect more such orders.
“We are going to stop closing existing, reliable power plants that are essential to our grid, and we are going to bring some common sense back,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said last month on Fox Business.
Now the Campbell plant sits in limbo: Keeping it open has cost $80 million through Sept. 30, or about $615,000 a day, its owner said recently. But closing it would require overturning an emergency order. The situation has plunged the heavily Republican area—in deeply divided Michigan—into an unusual debate.
“Everybody we talked to, Republican and Democrat, were glad it was closing,” said Susan Hoekema, a retired attorney who has lived about 3 miles from the plant since 2006—and recalls black soot covering her windowsills. “It’s kind of seen as a dinosaur around here.”
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There is no reliability emergency, at least, not yet. The Campbell plant’s operator, Consumer’s Energy, told the administration the plant was not needed, and they already had purchased a gas plant of similar capacity nearby, as well as having a large buildout of wind, solar, and batty facilities underway. The Michigan Public Service Commission, and the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, (MISO) said the same.
Wright and the other genius businessmen in the Trump administration apparently believe that utility management can be as unpredictable as say, international tariffs.
But reality and history do not support that view, as Michigan’s Public Service Commission chair, Dan Scripps, commented, “Put simply, we don’t plan the grid 90 days at a time.”