Digital Press Briefing: U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright

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MODERATOR: Good afternoon from the State Department's European Regional Media Center, or the Brussels Hub. I would like to welcome everyone joining us for today's virtual press conference. Today we are very honored to be joined by the U.S. Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright.

The press secretary and chief spokesperson at the U.S. Department of Energy, Ben Dietderich, will also be moderating the questions on this call. Ben will try to get to as many questions as possible in the time we have today.

Finally, a reminder that today's briefing is on the record. With that, let's get started. Secretary Wright, thank you so much for joining us today. I'll turn it over to you for your opening remarks.

SECRETARY WRIGHT: Thanks Bridget, and thanks everyone for joining us today. I look forward to a lot of questions and a great dialogue here.

I want to start with a solemn reflection. Twenty-four years ago today, a cowardly terrorism act struck the United States and took the lives of 2,976 Americans. My sympathies to everyone, families and friends that were affected directly by those deaths, and I know our country and our world was profoundly affected by such a savage act of terrorism. We will have a moment of silence for this event in a few minutes on the moment at which that terrorism attack struck.

I'd also like to note with sadness the tragic death of Charlie Kirk yesterday, where an assassin's bullet tried to silence an American who had toured our country ceaselessly trying to rekindle the ideas and spirit of our American founders. These are rough incidents for Americans and, I'm sure, for citizens of the world.

I'll move on to the press conference. I want to just frame a little bit the energy situation in the United States and our view looking outwards of it.

President Trump was elected in the United States for a lot of reasons, but that overriding reason was to bring back common sense to the federal government of the United States. This is across all regions of our government. Americans were frustrated at the growing top-down control and power in our country that was shrinking individual liberties and freedom for Americans. They were also - elected President Trump to restore a trust and belief in American values and American way of life, and I can best summarize President Trump's agenda as prosperity at home and peace abroad. That's President Trump's goal, is to reinvigorate the economy, freedom, and opportunity in the United States, and to bring peace around the world in any way we can. He has dedicated an inordinate amount of his time to conflicts all around the world and how to end them - what are the levers, what are the carrots, what are the sticks, how can the United States end conflicts abroad.

In my particular area, in the Energy Department, this is quite relevant. Energy is simply the infrastructure that enables everything else in our lives and in our economy. Energy is not a sector of the economy; it is the sector of the economy that enables everything else. Access to affordable, reliable, secure energy - the degree of that access determines the range of life opportunities you have. Two billion people on the planet today still don't have clean cooking fuels. They burn wood indoors to cook their meals and heat their homes. Indoor air pollution from this kills 2 to 3 million people every year, as estimated by the World Health Organization. I would describe this as the most urgent challenge in global energy. But this is - that's a low-income problem.

Even in the United States and around the world in high-income nations, a significant percent of the population struggles to pay their energy bills. And in countries that drive their energy prices high, industry doesn't disappear - it just moves overseas or to a different region with lower energy prices. And going with that industry is the jobs and economic value of that. It doesn't get rid of emissions; it just moves emissions.

We were going down that road in the United States for four years under the previous administration, where they conducted a self-described "all-of-the-above government program" to fight climate change - was the terms of it. But nothing in the policies can credibly be lined up with really efforts to move global emissions. Of course that's very hard to do. President Biden got elected promising to end fossil fuels. When he entered office, the United States got 82 percent of our primary energy from hydrocarbons, and when he left office, the United States got an identical 82 percent of our energy from hydrocarbons.

What you've seen in just eight months of President Trump's leadership is a lowering in the price of oil, a lowering in the price of natural gas. We have work to do to eventually lower the prices of electricity. There's a lot of long-term system costs and inertia there. But President Trump came in with a goal for energy abundance. Unleash American energy to reshore manufacturing, energy-intensive manufacturing in the United States; get in front and stay in front of the AI war - both of those require meaningfully more energy production than we have today, than when he walked into office. And all of his policies are to unleash businesses in America to grow our production of energy.

We also view energy as a great stabilizing force for the world. Our goal is to deploy American energy exports to our allies around the world so they can buy energy from reliable friends that source them, as opposed to adversaries. That point, I think, hits home here in Europe where I am today, where almost 50 percent of imported natural gas came from Russia. We're driving to move that to zero, and the biggest filler of that hole has been energy exports from the United States. We want to continue to do that and end all Russian energy imports into the EU.

I will - I will stop there and open it up for questions.

MODERATOR: All right, so as we move into the question period, I would just remind you all briefly about the Secretary's schedule, to clarify. It is just Secretary Wright in Brussels. I believe there was one story that misattributed other members of the cabinet being here today. And earlier today, the Secretary met with - which has been previously reported - the commissioner, Commissioner Jørgensen, for energy and housing. So we wanted to clarify that as well, as that was previously reported that that occurred in Milan, but that actually occurred today in Brussels.

So we're going to go to questions, and we're going to start with one from - one of our pre-written, pre-submitted questions. But just be aware that in about two minutes, we will be having a moment of silence.

Our first question will go to Jonathan Leake with The Daily Telegraph, who said: "Britain is trying to build its future energy security around renewables like wind and solar while minimizing oil and gas, and accelerating the decline of the North Sea. What are the risks for the UK economy?

SECRETARY WRIGHT: Yes, thank you for that question. In the United States, our President Biden wanted to go down that same pathway. The planet has spent about 4 to 5 trillion dollars in an attempt to build wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, and transmission infrastructure that's necessary to bring renewables to population centers. Today, globally, less than 3 percent of energy comes from wind, solar, and batteries. In the United States, it's right at 3 percent. So I would say the historical record has been a lot of investment, not a lot of energy. And where penetration has gotten high, like in the United Kingdom, it's massively driven up electricity prices and led to the leaving of most of the large energy-intensive industry from the United Kingdom.

This is, as I mentioned in the opening, one of those problems, that moving industry from the United Kingdom to Asia, I don't think that's green. I don't think that's a climate policy. It just moves jobs, economic benefits, and frankly, reduces national -

(Moment of silence.)

MODERATOR: Okay. Thank you very much for joining us for that moment. We are now going to continue with the Q&A. Jonathan, I think Secretary Wright wants to finish his statement and then I see you have a follow up. You have your hand raised, so we'll give you an opportunity to have a follow-up. But Secretary Wright.

SECRETARY WRIGHT: Yeah, Jonathan, I'll finish my question. So look, I went to college to work on fusion energy. I worked in solar energy in graduate school and geothermal energy soon after that. I personally - doesn't matter to me what technology is used to produce energy, but it's essential that energy is reliable, affordable, and secure. That's what it takes for a successful society. And the UK example is, to me, heartbreaking to see the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution export almost all of its energy-intensive industry - its steel making, its petrochemical making, its aluminum fabrication.

(Interruption.)

SECRETARY WRIGHT: Sorry about that. We - so it has been tough to watch as an outsider, and to give a few quick numbers on it, the UK has had the largest drop in percent terms of greenhouse gas emissions of any country in the world: 40 percent. But what you don't hear as much is almost three quarters of that drop is attributed to reduced energy consumption in the United Kingdom. That reduction over the last 20 years is almost 30 percent drop in energy consumption from two sources. The biggest one is just energy-intensive manufacturing left the country. That's not energy not consumed; it's just energy consumed by coal-powered industry in Asia. Now it got moved.

And when you drive energy prices high, you make energy less affordable, so people heat their homes to cooler temperatures in the wintertime, they make life sacrifices, they lower their quality of life a little bit. I don't think those are productive, and they're certainly not meaningfully moving global greenhouse gas emissions. The long run in climate change, the only thing that will reduce global emissions is to have energy sources that are equally affordable, reliable, and secure but lower carbon. That's the path forward, the long-term path forward, in climate change. To date, by far the biggest driver of decarbonization has been the rapid rise of natural gas. The United States in gross emissions has had by far the largest reduction in greenhouse gas, not in percent terms but in gross emissions reductions. And it has dominantly been driven by market-driven displacement of coal by natural gas because shale gas lowered the price of and availability of natural gas so much it has become by far our largest source of electricity generation.

MODERATOR: Great. Jonathan, did you have a quick follow up? You are unmuted, if you would like to speak. Your mic - microphone - you have to press dash 6. Okay.

QUESTION: All right.

MODERATOR: Okay. We're going to move on to the next -

QUESTION: Right. I've unmuted. Can you hear me now?

MODERATOR: Yes.

SECRETARY WRIGHT: Yes.

QUESTION: Hi. Sorry about that. Yeah, you've got the state visit from Donald Trump coming up. And last time he was in Britain, he commented on our energy policy in the context of the North Sea. I wondered if you'd had any discussions within him about the UK's energy policies and whether it would be on the agenda again for his forthcoming visit? And also whether you've expressed similar views to your counterparts in the UK?

SECRETARY WRIGHT: Yes, look, I have been outspoken about energy throughout all of my career, which has dominantly been in private industry, and certainly I've had dialogues with my counterparts in the UK, in the EU, and around the world. Nations set their energy policies, and the United States, we only set the American energy policy. But we are firm believers that growing energy production lifts everyone up economically; it also increases national security. The United Kingdom has a proud, tremendous history in the energy space from really launching the Industrial Revolution with innovations in coal and steam engines, early pioneers in nuclear energy.

As you mentioned, the North Sea - tremendous oil and gas reserves offshore, safely, and produced in a very high-tech fashion. A lot of reserves, of course, still left there. But the UK Government for whatever reason - I struggle to understand it - has tried - has strangled that energy production and led to more expensive and less reliable energy and allowed its industry to move overseas. We certainly would counsel otherwise. We in the United States believe in energy abundance, lifting people up, increasing our economy security, and leading in AI. That's what we think is best for the United States, and we certainly encourage all of our allies and friends to join us on that endeavor, and we look forward to coinvesting and doing everything we can to help.

MODERATOR: Thank you, Secretary Wright. We're going to take another question from prewritten. This is from Ciaran Sunderland from Contexte in Belgium. The question was: "From the U.S. perspective, what is the best, most effective way for the European Union to meet the $750 billion energy import terms of the recent transatlantic trade deal? Should they focus on increasing imports of nuclear, LNG, or gas?"

SECRETARY WRIGHT: My answer would be yes. I think those are ambitious energy import targets. Certainly, the United States can supply that, but that's a framework that's expecting energy trade to grow significantly from our country - the United States LNG exports growing to displace the rest of Russian natural gas that is still imported into Europe. You mentioned gasoline - of course, Russian oil still gets into the European Union via Türkiye and India where the Russian oil is refined in the gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel and shipped on to Europe. And, yes, the U.S. is the world's largest producer of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel and a large exporter of that as well. So that is another great avenue for growth in our energy trade.

And I think the EU and United States are both enthusiastic about seeing a nuclear renaissance. We've got a couple dozen American company with billions of dollars invested - capital, private capital - to develop next-generation nuclear reactors. We believe that will be a growing export from the United States. We'd love to cooperate and bring those technologies to the EU, as well as large-scale reactors. We are building some large scale - or about to sign a final construction contract but already have a deal to build large-scale reactors in Poland. We're working with other central European countries. So yeah, to achieve those targets, it's a growth in energy exports from the U.S. into the EU across the board. Thank you for the question.

MODERATOR: Thank you, Secretary Wright. Now, we'll go to Kim Mackrael with the Wall Street Journal. Please unmute.

SECRETARY WRIGHT: Mute problem again. Kim, if you can hear us, we cannot hear you.

QUESTION: Hi there. Can you hear me now?

SECRETARY WRIGHT: Yes.

QUESTION: Sorry about that. Thank you. So this is actually a follow up to that last question about the $750 billion planned purchases. When you met, Secretary, with Commissioner Jørgensen, I think earlier today if I heard that correctly.

SECRETARY WRIGHT: Kim -

QUESTION: Sorry, can you hear me? Sorry, I don't know if you can hear me all right. And I'm not hearing anybody else.

MODERATOR: Another prewritten question - Eleonora Rinaldi from MLex, Belgium: "Do you agree with the EPA's proposed rule to rescind it's 2009 Endangerment Finding?"

SECRETARY WRIGHT: Yes, I do agree with the EPA's proposed rule to rescind the Endangerment Finding in the United States. Look, climate change is a real, physical phenomenon. Mostly from the burning of hydrocarbons, we have raised atmospheric CO2 concentration by about 50 percent. This absorbs infrared radiation and leads to a warming of the planet. We've seen a little bit over 1 degree C of warming in the last 125 years. Some of that was natural as we came out of the Little Ice Age, but let's assume most of that is from increased greenhouse gas concentrations. That's a real thing.

But if you look at what are the endangerments or impacts of climate change so far, deaths from extreme weather may be the most talked about substance for this. A century ago it was about a half a million people per year. Today, that's in the 10 to 15 thousand people per year, so 97 percent reduction in deaths from extreme weather in a world with four times as many people. And that's not because extreme weather shrunk; it actually statistically does not show a trend up or downward over the long term. That's just a better energized world is a safer and more robust place. So everything has tradeoffs, but the impact of hydrocarbons I would say has been massively larger in making safer, longer, healthier lives. It's causing some warming, but is the net impact of hydrocarbon consumption to endanger humans? All of the data would say quite the opposite.

And frankly, the climate economists - we kind of struggle to find what is it from climate change that's causing greater risks to humans right now. The world has slowly gotten a little bit warmer, a little bit greener, a little bit wetter. Agricultural productivity continues to rise. That also from technology, but some also from more plant food in the atmosphere, and a warmer, wetter world is more conducive to growing crops.

Now sea levels are rising, eight inches in the last 125 years. If you look across the tide gauges around the world, we don't see an acceleration in that, but sea levels are rising. So again, a real thing, but should this be viewed as endangering to Americans, which is what the Endangerment Finding is about? The data would say otherwise.

And I'll give one other data point on this and just sort of a big picture thing. It's turned out that not only does climate change not look to be an urgent threat - it's a real thing - but doing something about it has proven remarkably difficult. Today, globally the world gets 85 percent of its energy from hydrocarbons, exactly the same percent it got 50 years ago. So trillions of dollars of investments, government mandates, efforts to change this have not been wildly successful. It's just very hard to replace hydrocarbons.

In the U.S. Government today, we're all-in to get a renaissance of nuclear energy. We'd like to see it grow. We have a next generation geothermal technology we're excited about. I think that's going to start contributing to the energy sector. And fusion energy, that I went to college to work on 40 years ago - I think we're going to see incredible progress on that during the Trump Administration. We're going to see multiple pathways to ultimately produce commercial fusion energy, so we're all-in in bringing new energy sources online.

But government subsidies and government mandates have not moved the global energy trajectory, and I don't see any prospects of them doing that in the sort run. Very hard to justify an endangerment finding or to justify major government action to fight or solve climate change. I think that's a little bit overoptimistic or a little bit arrogant view of the problem.

MODERATOR: Thank you, Secretary Wright. Now we're going to take a question from Narin Diri with ANKA News Agency in Türkiye: "Returning to traditional energy sources could potentially increase global reliance on producers like Russia. How does the United States plan to balance this shift while Europe is reducing dependence on Russian energy? And in this context, do you see a role for Türkiye as a key transit country in diversifying European energy supplies?"

SECRETARY WRIGHT: So, I would challenge the premise a little bit. It's written a lot that President Trump is going to swing the world back to hydrocarbons when President Biden got elected saying he was going to kill hydrocarbons, and the global consumption of oil, gas, and coal all grew throughout his administration, the production of hydrocarbons in the United States grew, and we were 82 percent hydrocarbon when he came in and 82 percent hydrocarbon when he left.

So politicians - they can't just change the energy system by shouting about it and passing subsidies. That's just now how energy works. The main impact of the Biden administration was to increase the risk and the cost to produce hydrocarbons, which means it takes a little bit higher price to incentivize the production to match - for supply to match demand. So President Biden was successful in one thing: He raised the price of oil and natural gas and coal in the United States. He drove our electricity prices up by about 25 percent, he angered Americans, and he got voted out of office.

So President Trump's agenda is a little humbler. It's energy makes people's lives better, energy can help bring peace to the world; I'm going to get out of the way, I'm not going to demonize hydrocarbons, I'm going to let the marketplace work and drive down the price of oil, gas, and coal. And his agenda has been successful in that. Now, he's only been there eight months, but markets discount, meaning they look ahead at signals that the administration is sending, and I think it's clear that the production of oil, natural gas, and coal will continue and will be less impeded in the United States, therefore production's going to grow faster, therefore it's had a downward impact on prices.

So when you mention Russia, the reliance on them, I mean, Russian production is not growing. It's actually sort of in flat to gradual decline. The United States 20 years ago was the largest importer of oil in the world and the largest net importer of natural gas. Today we're by far and away the largest producer of oil in the world, and we're not only by far - by a factor of two - the world's largest natural gas producer but also by far the world's largest net exporter of natural gas.

So I think the best way to combat the market power, for example, of a Russia is to enable the growth of hydrocarbon production everywhere. That shrinks Russia's market share. Every year, Russia's market share is shrinking. Right now, as world demand for oil grows a little over 1 percent a year, coal demand's growing about 2 percent a year, and natural gas is growing 3 percent a year, Russian production's not growing. So it doesn't eliminate their power, but it is shrinking.

MODERATOR: Thank you, Secretary Wright. We're now going to take a question from Sinan Recber with Tagesspiegel. You can unmute.

QUESTION: Yes. Thank you very much. Can you hear me?

SECRETARY WRIGHT: Yes. You nailed it, Sinan.

QUESTION: Yes. All right. So there have been calculations by different experts on the $750 billion headline figure in the energy chapter. And some experts say that it's very unrealistic to actually meet this headline figure for the EU. So could you tell me something about your view of the headline figure, and how important is it that there's a very concrete path to these $750 billion? Thank you.

SECRETARY WRIGHT: So Sinan, I would agree that the target is very ambitious. It's very ambitious, and I think that's a common thread of President Trump and his administration. If you don't aim high, you don't achieve high. He's set some very ambitious targets in other areas, and I think we're already seeing great progress in meeting them and achieving them - AI investments or overseas investments in the United States, for example.

So to achieve those targets - but there absolutely is a pathway to do it. And again, it's to displace Russian LNG with American LNG. It's to replace oil from Russia that comes in as products - gas, diesel, and jet fuel into Russia, to displace some of that with American exports. That gets you maybe two-thirds of the way there, and it also assumes that the plans and discussions we've had on nuclear cooperation continues to go forward, and we sign more, like we did in Poland, large-scale deals for nuclear development in the EU. If you do all three of those, you get there.

MODERATOR: Thank you. All right. We're going to move on. We have a question from Manuel-Iulian from Romania: "Does the Secretary plan to engage more with Romania, considering Romania's planned energy investments?"

SECRETARY WRIGHT: Absolutely. Look, the United States' goal is to engage with all of our allies around the world, and in all different formats. A lot of this is going to be selling U.S. energy; others, it's going to be bringing capital and U.S. companies maybe to come develop resources in countries around the world - whether that's, again, building nuclear power plants, or working on drilling for oil and gas, or coal mining, or geothermal harvesting. We want to cooperate with the countries of the world to better energize their societies and the world as a whole. And Romania is absolutely on that list.

MODERATOR: Thank you, Secretary Wright. We're now going to take a question from Rachel Millard: "Do you think the European Union and the United Kingdom should lessen their reliance on Chinese technology for energy, such as batteries and solar panels?"

SECRETARY WRIGHT: So that question: Should we lessen our reliance on China? I think the answer to that is a strong yes. China's been a fast-growing economic power for decades. There's some positives in that story, a lot of people have been lifted out of poverty, but the current ruler of China has just shown very little respect for human rights within the country and has been quite aggressive around the world. Our cyber attacks from Chinese - China is a rising threat to global security. We'd love to resolve that one as well and have - and bring Chinese more in line with the rest of the world in our desires and our interests. But barring significant progress on that - and I think that's a tough putt - the goal of the United States and our allies is absolutely to reduce our dependence on imports from China and particularly in critical things for economic and national security like energy and energy systems.

MODERATOR: All right. And I think we have time for just a few more; we're going to be wrapping up here shortly. We will go to another prewritten question. This one is going to come from Hans Davidsen-Nielsen from Denmark: "This administration has stopped Revolution Wind in the United States. Will it stop other wind farms?"

SECRETARY WRIGHT: So I don't know the answer to that question because it is all under evaluation. Off-shore wind has become extremely unpopular in the United States for people that live in the coastal communities where it is. It just simply has a very large footprint - a lot of land, a lot of materials, a lot of disturbance to fisheries and whales - for a relatively modest amount of unreliable power. The nations of the world that have gone all-in on off-shore wind - like Denmark for example, Germany, and the United Kingdom - are all near the top of the leaderboards for the most expensive electricity in the world, far more than twice as high as in the United States. We absolutely do not want to go down that pathway. We want to restore affordability in the United States for our citizens. We want to bring industry back to the United States, we want to win and lead in the AI race. All of that requires massively more affordable, reliable, 24/7 electricity generation.

But we are looking at those wind farms as far as environmental impact, as far as compliance with contracts, and where they are. So there is a very active effort underway in the administration to determine the right path of action there. Final decisions on what's going to happen there has not been made.

MODERATOR: Thank you, Secretary Wright. And as we conclude the call today I wanted to give you the opportunity to share a little bit more about your trip and where we started at the beginning of the week, where we're heading in just a couple days.

SECRETARY WRIGHT: Yes. Yeah, first of all, the administration is a huge fan of all of our allies in the European Union and on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. We've got a long and storied history together in geopolitics and economics and cultural cooperation. We want to grow that as much as possible. This trip for me began in Milan at the Gastech forum. Natural gas is the fastest-growing energy source on the planet - not in percentage terms; that's not relevant. But in new energy added to the world. The world consumed 500 exajoules of energy in 2010 and about 600 exajoules of energy per year right now. Of that hundred extra exajoules, 35 percent of that came from natural gas. Fastest-growing energy source on the planet. Number two, by the way, is coal; number three is oil; and distant fourth and fifth is solar and wind.

We want more energy in the world, and we want it affordable, reliable, and secure. The Gastech Conference was fantastic as far as talking to buyers and producers from around the world, how do we grow the ecosystem of natural gas.

I'm here in Brussels for great dialogues with our colleagues here at the European Union. We're going to discuss trade, we're going to discuss peace in Russia-Ukraine, and so many other issues. And after I leave here, we will head to Vienna for the International Atomic Energy Agency meeting. We're looking forward to meeting with colleagues from around the world there and trying to, as well, launch not just the United States but the world renaissance, we hope, in nuclear - commercial nuclear power production to better energize everyone around the planet, and also for some very serious and frank dialogues about how to reduce proliferation risks of nuclear weapons. That is critically important, and obviously Iran is front and center right there. The - President Trump and the administration simply will not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran, and if we can go the other direction and dismantle the Iranian nuclear program together with the Iranian Government, it can help unleash peace and prosperity across the Middle East, and I think massively improve the quality of life for 90 million Iranian citizens.

So our agenda is peace - prosperity at home, and peace abroad. Thank you all for your time today. Great questions.

MODERATOR: And unfortunately that is all the time we have. I would like to thank all of the participating journalists, and thank you, Secretary Wright, for making time for this press briefing today.

We will share with all the participating journalists an audio recording as soon as this call wraps, and then we'll send a transcript as soon as it is available. We'd also love to hear your feedback, and you can contact us anytime at [email protected]. Thank you again for your participation, and we hope you can join us for another Brussels Hub press briefing soon. This ends today's press briefing.

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