By NICK POPE

Energy Secretary Chris Wright explained his plans to fortify America’s fragile power grid and a host of other energy policy issues in a Monday interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Wright has his work cut out for him atop the Department of Energy (DOE) after the Biden administration and former Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm left him with elevated energy prices and fragile power grids in both the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

Before addressing other topics, like the massive portfolio of green energy loans he inherited from his predecessor and the future of climate alarmism politics, Wright made clear that the first step toward strengthening the grid is to “stop digging” a deeper hole with policies that undermine power supply.

“I’m very concerned about the grid, very concerned about the grid,” Wright told the DCNF, noting that average electricity prices surged on the Biden administration’s watch despite relatively limited growth in demand over the same period of time.

“We have to make significant changes in a complicated system. Changing permitting laws is part of that, changing how regulation is done, and then just some common sense moves to enable technology to get more to the existing grid in the time that demand is arriving. We have to increase throughput with the existing physical assets. I think it can be done, but it is a daunting challenge. And I wish we weren’t walking into the hole we’re in right now, but we were dug a hole by the previous administration, and that’s our starting point,” he said.

Grid experts and operators have warned that the Biden administration’s aggressive regulatory agenda for power plants threatens grid reliability in the U.S., with huge swaths of the country already facing risks of inadequate supply in the event of stronger-than-usual conditions in the summer or winter. Shoring up the grid is an even more urgent task in light of the projected surge in aggregate demand analysts are expecting to come from the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and the power-hungry data centers needed to sustain the cutting-edge technology.

In Wright’s view, part of the solution to America’s power grid problem is using the levers of government to forestall the retirement of coal-fired power plants capable of providing cheap, reliable power to the grid, he told the DCNF.

“If you want to grow your supply, the first thing to do is stop digging the hole. We’ve been closing coal plants for quite some time now. That’s gotta stop. We have to keep these firm, reliable existing plants online. That’s objective number one,” Wright said. “And then there’s existing plants that are open that run at low operating percent of the time because of regulations and things put in the way. We have a fair amount of electricity generating capacity that already exists and connected up to wires. So, that’s low-hanging fruit.”

Another lever at Wright’s disposal to ramp up the U.S. power supply is the Loan Programs Office (LPO), a DOE sub-office that provides financing for innovative energy technologies. President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act supercharged LPO’s coffers, and the office proceeded to pump billions of dollars into green energy projects.

Wright mentioned “nuclear and next generation geothermal,” as well as grid resilience technologies and other undertakings “that can help resource supply chains for electrical equipment in the United States” as specific things that LPO may look to finance while he runs DOE. However, Wright — a self-professed energy wonk who has worked with a host of different energy sources in the private sector and the founder of Liberty Energy — said that the agency’s general preference is to see the private sector take the lead and innovate.

“The first and primary tool is private capital and private businesses. Most of these things, with a reasonable business climate, will happen in the marketplace,” Wright explained. “That is our preference. But, if there are issues that are critical and have to happen in a timely fashion because of the mess we’re in with our electricity grid today, then we will deploy capital.”

Notably, the Biden LPO rushed to shove billions of dollars in loans and conditional loans out the door in the lame duck period, powering through the concerns of the DOE’s internal watchdog and elected Republicansthat the rush to get funding out may have put taxpayer funds at risk of being wasted. Wright told the DCNF that the DOE will honor its end of LPO contracts that it is obligated to fulfill and that the agency will keep an eye on conditional loans to ensure counterparties are meeting conditions, adding that the agency “will deploy capital only if it’s in the best interest of American taxpayers” in situations where DOE has discretion.

Wright is evidently concerned about the condition of the power grid that keeps the lights on for all 50 states, but he is also keen to work with Puerto Rico — a U.S. territory — to address its own ailing power infrastructure.

The energy secretary met with Puerto Rico Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón in February to discuss fixing Puerto Rico’s grid, which has been ravaged by hurricanes. The Biden administration made a major push to make the island a “poster child” for the benefits of green energy, but Wright says his predecessors’ efforts did little — if anything — to seriously address the problem, Wright explained.

“Congress appropriated a significant amount of money to rebuild it entirely, and the Biden administration decided they wanted to make Puerto Rico the poster child of renewable energy, and therefore would only fund the building of renewable energy. Needless to say, very little has been built. Electricity prices are high. The grid is unreliable. They’ve had many years in a row of negative population outflow,” Wright told the DCNF.  “The businesses are at risk of being unable to continue to manufacture pharmaceutical drugs, for example, that come into the mainland of the United States, and a new governor got elected to fix this energy problem. We are excited to get to work and invest money already appropriated by our Congress to better the lives of Puerto Ricans, millions of Puerto Ricans.”

“I would say, it’s simply an outrage that the money has been there for years, but since it didn’t fit a political narrative, it wasn’t spent,” Wright continued. “Puerto Ricans are victims of energy politics. We’re humans-first administration. They were a politics-first administration.”

More broadly, Wright believes that commonsense energy politics is overtaking climate alarmism, though declaring the latter dead for good is “too optimistic,” he told the DCNF.

“I think this president, shooting straight on energy, putting humans first, won the election. So, clearly the pendulum is slinging that way. I think President Trump is a good part of the reason that the pendulum is swinging the other way. He had the courage to speak common sense about energy,” said Wright. “He’s been a bold, outspoken person about energy and the interests of American people, and he has started that pendulum going the other way. I am thrilled to be on the team with President Trump to help continue this swing towards what I call ‘energy sobriety.’”