ICYMI: GOP criticism of Trump/Wright energy cuts is mounting

Washington, D.C. – Recent reporting from POLITICO revealed a growing number of Chris Wright haters inside and outside Washington. Pressure for Trump’s Energy Secretary to step down appears to be mounting as Wright continues to cancel cost-saving, job creating energy projects. Since May, Trump’s Department of Energy has put 338,150 good-paying jobs and over $23.88 billion in total grant awards on the chopping block.

Across the country and inside the White House, Republican outrage with Chris Wright has escalated over the last month as the impacts of Trump and Wright’s energy policy are saddling Americans with higher costs and pink slips.

• Representative Mark Amodei (NV-02) said he requested a meeting with Energy Secretary Wright to push back on the Trump administration’s attacks on funding for clean energy projects. Amodei said he was specifically concerned about funding for the Nevada Gold Mines Solar PV Project.
  • Amodei urged the administration not to cancel projects just because they were funded under the Biden administration, saying, “Just because they were done by the Biden administration doesn’t mean all of it sucks. […] In those cases of projects that can sustain that investment, then it ought to be sustained. If it makes sense, it is possible to comply with the present administration’s goals and not cancel everything because it was the previous administration.” 
• Senator Shelley Moore Capito (WV) said she was “worried” about the status of the Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub after it was on a list of project grants set to be canceled by the DOE.
  • Capito said, “DOE told me that the list is just a broad list; there’s no real intent to cancel all those projects,” Capito said. “But some may get canceled, so it’s still just unclear.”
• Governor Spencer Cox (UT) criticized the DOE’s cancellation of the Esmerelda 7 Solar Project, saying, “This is how we lose the AI/energy arms race with China.”
  • Cox encouraged support for solar projects, saying, “Solar with batteries can now be close to baseload power and we should keep these projects rolling until we get the gas/nuclear/geothermal plants we need.”
• Senator Thom Tillis (NC) criticized the Trump administration’s targeting of clean energy projects, saying the DOE’s list of planned grant cancellations would increase energy costs and that many of the projects were on their way to being built, and likely had contracts to deliver power in the next three to five years.
• Senator Kevin Cramer (ND) expressed frustration after Project Tundra, a carbon capture and storage retrofit of a coal-fired power plant in North Dakota, was included in a list of grants the Energy Department planned to cancel.
  • Cramer told reporters he is pressing DOE to “stick with the things that they said they would do in North Dakota” after both a hydrogen and carbon capture project in the state showed up on the list of potential cuts.
  • Cramer said he planned to speak with Interior Secretary Burgum about the project, saying, “He knows that project very well.”
• Senator Tim Sheehy (MT) said that the DOE’s cancellation of $1 billion in funding for the Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Hub would “of course” take away good-paying jobs in Montana.
  • Sheehy claimed that the project would not have lost funding if the government had not been shutdown, despite Secretary Wright saying the funds would have been canceled even if the government was not shut down.
• Ten unnamed Trump administration officials told Ben Lefebvre and Zack Colman at POLITICO that Secretary Wright’s relationship with the White House is increasingly strained.
  • “It just seems so messy right now,” said one person familiar with the dynamic between Wright and the White House. “I don’t know how much longer he’s got.”
  • “It’s just a situation where there’s a lot of tension in the building across the board,” another person said.
  • The fight over $30 billion in DOE clean energy grants exemplifies how Wright and his top aides have failed to jell with the White House, others knowledgeable about the policy debate said.
  • “Chris Wright thinks that he knows energy better than the president and it seems like he’s looking to make that very clear to the White House,” another person said.
  • “Someone is always going to be the first to go,” another person said. “It’s not like Wright knew Donald Trump.”

Amid the Republican infighting, a new Associated Press poll found that over a third of Americans say their electricity bills are a “major” source of stress.