Posted on Saturday, February 1, 2025
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by Ben Solis
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On his first day in office, President Donald Trump declared a “national energy emergency,” citing “inadequate energy supply and infrastructure.” Senate confirmation hearings over the past few weeks have made clear that Trump’s cabinet picks are determined to address that emergency as a top priority for both domestic prosperity and national security.
Throughout his 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly promised to secure the “number one lowest cost energy and electricity on earth.” Energy prices soared 30 percent under the Biden administration, a major driver of the inflation that plagued Americans’ pocketbooks. The Biden administration’s regulatory war on domestic oil and gas production additionally undermined the hard-won energy independence achieved during Trump’s first term.
But Trump’s cabinet picks thus far appear more than up to the task of leading the United States back to energy independence and dominance.
Undoubtedly the most important figure in this mission will be Chris Wright, the former CEO of Denver-based fracking company Liberty Energy, whom Trump has nominated for Secretary of Energy. Trump praised Wright as “one of the pioneers who helped launch the American Shale Revolution that fueled American Energy Independence.” During his confirmation hearing, Wright affirmed his commitment to Trump’s vision for an “all of the above” approach to energy production, which includes boosting oil and natural gas production while also investing in coal, nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, solar, and geothermal.
Another key player in bringing about Trump’s promised energy revolution is new Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, the former Governor of North Dakota. The Senate confirmed Burgum Thursday in a 79-18 vote after he likewise stated that the United States is facing an “energy crisis.” He also pointed out weaknesses in the U.S. energy grid and pledged to reverse obstacles thrown up by the Biden administration to oil and gas exploration on federal lands.
Increasing domestic energy production and grid capacity will be one of the primary concerns of the Trump administration over the next four years as demand is expected to skyrocket. An analysis of Department of Energy data published last December shows that data centers, which power new technologies like artificial intelligence, could need up to three times as much electricity as they currently consume by 2028.
In its 2024 long-term reliability assessment, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation also found that Americans will face “critical reliability challenges” without more investment in fossil fuels. “New solar PV, battery, and hybrid resources continue to flood interconnection queues, but completion rates are lagging behind the need for new generation,” the report states. “Furthermore, the performance of these replacement resources is more variable and weather-dependent than the generators they are replacing.”
This looming shortfall also has drastic implications as tensions mount with Communist China. As Burgum warned during his confirmation hearing, without increasing the country’s baseload capacity, “the U.S. is going to lose the AI arms race to China, and that has direct impacts on our national security and the future of this country.”
For its part, China has for years recognized the need to increase its energy production and invested heavily in all forms of energy, including coal, which has become the bogeyman of climate alarmists in the United States. As Trump Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned in his confirmation hearing, the United States is not in a “clean energy race” with China, but rather just an “energy race.”
“China will build 100 new coal plants this year,” Bessent told members of the Senate Finance Committee. “There is not a clean energy race. There is an energy race. China will build ten nuclear plants this year.”
Indeed, in 2023, the last full year for which data is available, China started construction on 70.2 gigawatts of new coal-power capacity, nearly 20 times as much as the rest of the world’s 3.7 gigawatts. Early indicators suggest more of the same in 2024, with Beijing going all-out to increase China’s energy production in spite of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s public statements that the communist country would “strictly control coal consumption” and work to reach “net zero emissions” by 2060.
Professor Luli Jiao-long told me in an interview that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) never truly bought into its rhetoric around “green energy.” Luli is a former CCP official who defected after working at the National Development and Reform Commission, the CCP’s primary economic policymaking body. As he explained, climate activists’ efforts to shut down fossil fuel production in the United States and throughout the West only strengthen and embolden the CCP as it continues to expand coal power production.
The Biden administration’s energy policies, which included canceling federal drilling permits and pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into wind and solar subsidies, were a major gift for Beijing. “These policies created a legacy that disadvantages American industry compared to China, as they made electricity supply unaffordable and unpredictable,” Professor Luli said. “A return to Trump’s policies is exactly what Beijing was afraid of.”
For the American people, Beijing being afraid of Trump’s early changes to energy policy is as sure a sign as any that voters made the correct choice last November.
Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.
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