Chris Wright sought to downplay the Department of Energy’s staffing and spending cuts Wednesday as he faced lawmakers for the first time since he became a Cabinet member.
The Energy secretary spent much of his time in front of the House Appropriations Energy and Water subcommittee defending President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget proposal, which includes draconian cuts to federal spending. He dismissed concerns raised by Democrats, the energy industry and environmentalists of a mass exodus of DOE employees.
The department has lost less than 1,000 people since Inauguration Day, Wright said. More than 3,000 of DOE’s roughly 16,000 employees have opted to resign as part of the Trump administration’s deferred resignation process, although some employees have not yet departed, according to reporting by POLITICO’s E&E News.
When pressed on staffing departures, Wright said the overall number is “in flux.”
“The changes in head count will be done dominantly by voluntary retirements and the delayed resignation program,” he said.
The former CEO of fracking services firm Liberty Energy also vowed to move forward with at least some clean energy projects, following a vetting process that he said could be wrapped up this summer.
“We are reviewing existing projects; we’ve canceled zero so far,” Wright said.
He also said there isn’t a desire to “shrink or stop any of the critical research” in the DOE’s national lab network.
That didn’t temper the criticism from Democrats — and, to a lesser degree, some Republicans — about the White House budget released last week. The proposal calls for the cancellation of $15 billion in unspecified “Green New Scam funds,” along with big cuts to a slew of core DOE functions, including the offices of renewable energy and energy efficiency, environment management, nuclear energy, fossil energy, and the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy.
Subcommittee Chair Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) said he has “some concerns candidly” with the proposed White House cuts to nuclear energy.
“We’re at a pivotal moment in the development of our nuclear energy technologies in the United States, the success of which are critical to regaining international dominance in the nuclear market for our own domestic energy security,” the lawmaker said.
“I expect to see a resurgence in civil nuclear power under the Trump administration, and federal investment, in my view, is essential,” he added.
The subcommittee’s Democratic ranking member, Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur, criticized Wright for failing to respond to congressional inquiries. She also blasted the Trump administration for firing at least 19 inspectors general — including DOE’s Teri Donaldson — without the legally required notification of Congress. Sarah Nelson is now DOE’s acting IG.
“You need an inspector general,” Kaptur told Wright. “Because there is criminality in energy. And you don’t want your neck to be on the line.”
Here are five takeaways from Wednesday’s hearing, which touched on everything from nuclear power to artificial intelligence.
Nuclear energy
The president’s budget proposes a more than $400 million cut to the Office of Nuclear Energy. It calls for reducing funding for “non-essential research on nuclear energy to focus on what is truly needed to achieve national dominance in nuclear technology,” such as “innovative concepts for nuclear reactors.”
On Wednesday, Wright said DOE will focus on boosting the small modular reactor designs that have so far failed to be successfully commercialized due to high costs. He said the U.S. needs to increase its domestic production and enrichment of uranium. The U.S. imports uranium from Canada, Kazakhstan and Russia, among other nations.
“A little less than a third of current enriched uranium powering the United States nuclear reactors actually comes by American companies produced in America,” Wright said. “Two-thirds of that is imported from overseas. This is unacceptable.”
Wright said the department will use its Loan Programs Office to advance nuclear energy projects. Some DOE staffers and clean energy advocates worry the DOE will seek to shutter that office, which finalized a flurry of loans in the final weeks of the Biden administration.
Wright also said DOE aims to boost U.S. capacity to reprocess nuclear waste to provide more fuel for power.
“A lot of this waste and burden right now could actually be fuel and could be a value to next generation reactors,” Wright said. “DOE has worked hard to prepare a study that will come out before too long on what is the appropriate way to move forward [on] reprocessing.”
The U.S. does not have a permanent facility to store nuclear waste, after years of opposition from Nevada politicians to the Yucca Mountain repository. Wright said DOE will take an “opt-in approach” for the siting of such a repository, a reference to support from local communities.
Hydrogen and solar
DOE officials have weighed canceling four of seven hydrogen hubs funded with $7 billion from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, according to documents circulating in the agency and on Capitol Hill. The documents suggest the hubs in predominantly blue states could be eliminated: ARCHES in California, the Pacific Northwest hub, the Midwest hub and Mid-Atlantic hub.
But on Wednesday, Wright pushed back on the assertion that the hubs are at risk of being imminently canceled. He said “zero decisions” have been made on projects when asked about the Midwest hub by Rep. Frank Mrvan (D-Ind.).
“All of the hydrogen hubs … right now are being funded in feasibility studies, they are developing,” Wright said. In the meantime, DOE’s review will examine whether projects have co-financing, offtake agreements and good engineering, he told lawmakers.
If “it looks viable, it’s got an offtake agreement so it’s not a bridge to nowhere, … those are the kind of things that we’re going to go forward with,” he told Mrvan.
Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) also pressed Wright on ARCHES, one of two hubs that is focusing on the development of “green” hydrogen produced with renewables. In April, the majority of California’s congressional delegation, including several Republicans, sent a letter to the Energy secretary urging support for the hub, saying it is critical for jobs and economic activity.
Wright said a response to that letter likely would be coming this summer, after completion of the review of hundreds of large projects.
“One of the things that slowed me down is getting people, getting qualified business professionals” to conduct the reviews, he said, adding the process is “now rolling.”
Wright also spoke favorably of solar power, which Trump has repeatedly criticized. The industry is under pressure because of Trump’s tariffs on components, including on grid batteries imported from China that are frequently paired with projects.
Solar is an “industry source with a future,” Wright said. “I think you’ll see continued work on solar at the Department of Energy.” Trump is proposing a more than 70 percent cut in funding in his fiscal 2026 budget proposal for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, which houses DOE’s solar research.
Solar and battery storage are expected to constitute more than 80 percent of new additions to the grid this year, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Gas exports
Wright said his priorities for DOE include unleashing “a golden era of American energy dominance” and strengthening U.S. national security. He called attention to recent DOE export approvals for liquefied natural gas terminals and again slammed the Biden administration over its pause on those licenses.
“I’m proud to report that we have officially ended the previous administration’s reckless pause on LNG export permits and returned DOE to regular order for reviewing and approving new permits,” Wright told committee members.
Since the Trump administration took over in January, DOE has “approved applications for projects” that will export more than 9.5 billion cubic feet a day of natural gas as LNG, he said.
Recent green lights went to Venture Global’s CP2 project and Kimmeridge’s Commonwealth LNG project, both planned for the Louisiana coast.
The Biden administration paused LNG export approvals in January 2024 to conduct an economic and environmental analysis, which found that big increases in liquefied natural gas exports would cause U.S. prices to spike. The pause of permit approvals — needed to export LNG to countries that lack a free trade agreement with the U.S. — was blocked last July by a federal judge.
The public comment period on the study ended in March.
Artificial intelligence
Wright told lawmakers that the U.S. needs to boost energy production to meet an expected increase in energy demand from data centers and artificial intelligence.
“The next energy intensive manufacturing industry is AI,” Wright told the subcommittee. “It takes a lot of energy — in the highest and most expensive form of energy, electricity — to manufacture intelligence of very high value. So, yes, we need to have that here.”
Wright called AI “the Manhattan Project of our time,” referring to the World War II-era U.S. program to develop the nuclear bomb. In April, Wright unveiled a plan to build data centers on federal land, including at the national labs.
“Our agency has the world-class high-performance computing capabilities that enable fast and efficient AI research and development, including four of the world’s top 10 supercomputers,” he said.
So far, the Trump administration has prioritized AI, arguing it’s a major front in U.S. competition with China. Just days after taking office, Trump championed a $500 billion AI project run by SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and other companies. The Trump team also wants to build data centers on public lands.
“If we’re behind China in AI, our sovereignty [and] our national defense [are] at risk,” Wright said. “It is not an option for us to get second in AI.”
Energy prices
Electricity prices have grown steadily in the U.S. due to a wide range of factors, including costs tied new renewable energy and transmission infrastructure as well as utility spending on wildfire prevention.
During former President Joe Biden’s four years in office, the average price of electricity grew roughly 20 percent. Natural gas prices also increased in recent years, though prices have dropped since March. Gasoline prices have fallen from a year ago.
For Wright, reducing energy costs in the U.S. is a simple equation: The U.S. needs to produce more energy than demand, bolstered by quicker permitting for energy projects.
“We got to be ready to meet those demands without harming ratepayers by driving up price,” he said.
But the U.S. already produces more oil, natural gas and renewable energy than ever before. Now, industry representatives warn that Trump’s tariff policies, which have sparked a global trade war, could spike the price tag for new energy infrastructure.
Meanwhile, Kaptur said the Trump administration’s opposition to Biden-era clean energy programs risks raising energy prices in the United States.
“Our people are feeling directly how the pinch feels when rising energy costs impact every family and business,” she said. “Let me be crystal clear: Weakening U.S. energy progress at DOE is a direct threat to America’s energy security.”
