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Wright Delivers Opening Remarks to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Jun. 18, 2025

June 18, 2025 · U.S. Department of Energy · 0:06:20

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Energy Secretary Chris Wright delivered his opening statement to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, in the Department of Energy’s upload of the June 18, 2025 hearing on the President’s fiscal year 2026 budget request for the department. Wright set out the department’s priorities as he stated them: American energy dominance, national security, the Cold War legacy cleanup commitments, and innovation including AI — driven, he said, by the conviction that affordable, reliable, secure energy is the foundation of a strong and prosperous nation.

Wright told the committee the department had recently announced the termination of 24 projects totaling over $3.7 billion in taxpayer-funded financial assistance, which he said failed to meet the economic, national security, or energy security standards necessary to sustain DOE investment. He described a policy of energy addition in their place, thanked the committee for establishing an energy dominance financing program for DOE’s loan programs office in the budget legislation then moving through Congress, and said the office would return to supporting projects most critical to America’s energy security.

Why it matters

The ENR opening is Wright’s budget doctrine stated to the committee that authorizes his department: dominance, security, cleanup, and innovation as the mission — and the $3.7 billion in terminated awards as the proof that the stewardship test he describes is already being applied.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: Secretary Wright’s statement to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on June 18, 2025 that DOE had terminated 24 projects totaling over $3.7 billion for failing its economic, national security, or energy security standards, as he stated it. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, “Secretary Wright’s Opening Remarks to Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee - June 18, 2025” (official upload, embedded above; opening statement as delivered by Secretary Wright).