dbeard@dominionpost.com
MORGANTOWN – U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright toured the National Energy Technology Laboratory Morgantown campus on Tuesday, as part of his ongoing tour of all 17 Department of Energy National Laboratories.
He saw the facilities – including the under-construction Computational Science and Engineering Center – met researchers and learned about their projects.
He talked about the “One Big Beautiful Bill” – the budget reconciliation bill working its way through Congress. “It’s critical for the energy world that I work in,” he said. There have been large distortions across the energy market, particularly electricity, and that needs to be reformed.
“Energy is about humans,” he said. “We want to make people’s lives better.” That means more energy, lower cost energy, jobs, and winning the Artificial Intelligence arms race. The bill’s reforms on subsidies and penalties are key to getting the system going in the right direction.
NETL is devoted to fossil fuel research, and coal and natural gas are the two biggest sources of electricity worldwide, he said. “The things that are worked on here are big targets for big benefits to humanity.”
Wright took time for a Q&A session with the press. The Dominion Post noted that in the 13-state PJM regional energy grid, 40% of New Service Requests are for solar projects, while only 6.7% are for natural gas and none are for coal. In that context, we asked if there is a future for coal.
“The future for coal is long and bright,” he said. It accounts for a third of all the electricity generated on the planet – more than wind and solar combined. And its available day and night. Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, was PJM’s peak winter demand day, and gas and coal supplied 70% of the power, wind and solar just 3%. On Monday, in the sun and heat, wind and solar made up just 8%.
Answering another question, he said that one of his secretarial powers is stopping the closure of power plants. Some should be retired, but so many have been closed that are still midstream in their lives and are critical to a secure grid.
Growing demand for data centers for AI will increase the demand for electricity, he said. “If you’re going to add a lot of new capacity, the first thing you should do is stop shrinking the capacity you have.” About 40 coal plants are slated for closure this year. “Our biggest impact is going to stop the closure of most of those.”
On the topic of AI and data centers, Wright talked about permitting hurdles and the need to make it easier to build them. The 17 national laboratories have a lot of land and are accepting proposals for data centers to be cited on those lands, possibly with cooperative agreements to allow the labs to tap into those centers’ computational powers. “You will see data centers built on national lab property.”
He concluded, “I think the future of energy here in West Virginia is super exciting.” The state has been an energy powerhouse across its history. Natural gas and natural gas liquids, oil and coal are the fastest growing power sources across the world.
And West Virginia is a businesses-friendly state with cutting-edge industry such as Form Energy in Weirton – the iron-air battery manufacturing facility. “I think the outlook for energy and industry in West Virginia is quite bright.”
