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Wright Hosts a Press Conference at Ice Harbor Dam, Dec. 4, 2025

December 4, 2025 · U.S. Department of Energy · 0:11:41

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

What happened

Energy Secretary Chris Wright hosted a press conference in front of Ice Harbor Dam in Washington, in the Department of Energy’s upload of the December 4, 2025 event, and took questions from regional press. Wright argued hydro is a different kind of electricity: adding electrons when the grid does not need them does nothing, while dispatchable power that ramps up at peak demand is high-value power. The dam behind him, he said, can deliver 600 megawatts and is one of four already built — the asset class he credited for Washington’s well below-average electricity prices, even as he called the state’s gasoline prices the third highest in the country.

In questions, Wright said 96 percent of all energy storage in the United States is dams, with less than 10 minutes of battery storage nationwide, as he stated the figures; said the administration is not ending wind and solar but asks, after 33 years of subsidies, whether that is enough, with developers competing on a level playing field; and said states with renewable portfolio standards average electricity prices 30 percent higher than states without them, as he stated it in the exchange. Asked about an affordability question put to the President earlier in the week, Wright said the President was describing the trajectory of an administration working since its first day to drive energy prices down.

Why it matters

Ice Harbor is Wright’s peak-demand doctrine argued at the asset itself: existing hydro held up as stored, dispatchable, price-lowering power — and a defense of the Pacific Northwest dams in the middle of the litigation and salmon-restoration fights that surround them, on which he declined to comment beyond the administration’s goals.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: Secretary Wright’s Ice Harbor figures on December 4, 2025 — the dam’s 600 megawatts as he stated it, 96 percent of U.S. energy storage in dams, and the 30-percent renewable-portfolio-standard price comparison as he stated it in the press exchange. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, “Secretary Wright Hosts Ice Harbor Press Conference - December 4, 2025” (official upload, embedded above; remarks and answers as delivered by Secretary Wright).