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Secretary Wright Says the U.S. Must Add 100 Gigawatts of Firm Power in Five Years

September 24, 2025 · U.S. Department of Energy · 0:11:20

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

What happened

On CNBC’s Squawk Box, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the country is going through an energy renaissance: for the electricity sector the AI boom is the biggest driver of growth, reshoring of manufacturing will also drive it, and a huge part of American energy growth is exports to allies in Europe and Asia, as he stated it. Asked for the energy requirements in simple numbers, he said the United States needs to add 100 gigawatts of new firm capacity in the next five years, whereas when President Trump arrived the plans and queues were to close 100 gigawatts — mostly coal, a little natural gas — and add only 22 gigawatts of firm capacity, a net reduction of about 80 gigawatts; instead of minus 80, he said, the country has to go to plus 100, according to his remarks.

The hosts raised the report Wright commissioned and an op-ed by Steven Koonin, a former Obama administration science official, arguing that public perception of climate change and actual climate science have totally diverged. Wright said he has studied and engaged in the climate dialogue for over 20 years, that climate change is a very real physical phenomenon but not remotely close to one of the world’s biggest problems today, and that it has been used by politicians and activists to call it a crisis in a way divorced from the reality of the data, as he stated it. He said complex climate models provide limited guidance, that aggregated continental U.S. data show no significant long-term trend in the most extreme weather events, and that the IPCC’s own summary admitted it cannot tie carbon dioxide to increased adverse weather events, according to his remarks.

Challenged that critics put the department’s climate science and HHS science in the same politicized category, Wright said he can guarantee the energy and climate side is science-based, described himself as a tech and science person his whole life, noted the department commissioned the report, and said everything in life is about trade-offs, as he stated it.

Why it matters

The interview fixes the administration’s capacity arithmetic in one place — plus 100 gigawatts of firm power needed against a planned minus 80, as Wright stated it — and records the Energy secretary’s data-based defense of the department’s climate report against charges of politicized science.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, “Secretary Wright Joins CNBC’s Squawk Box - September 24, 2025”, 2025-09-24 (official upload, embedded above; published 2025-09-24). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.