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Wright Discusses Pennsylvania Energy Investment and Grid Risk on CNBC

July 15, 2025 · U.S. Department of Energy · 0:05:16

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNBC’s Brian Sullivan that private capital commitments announced in Pennsylvania had grown from $70 billion to $90 billion during the day’s event, according to the Department of Energy’s upload of the July 15, 2025 interview. Wright said the administration does not believe government should direct that capital, but predicted large data centers in Pennsylvania, where he said natural gas production is limited mainly by pipeline capacity to reach markets, alongside semiconductor manufacturing and reshored industry.

Sullivan cited a Department of Energy report warning of a large increase in blackout risk within five years for the PJM grid, which serves 60 million Americans across 13 states. Wright said the fix is to make it easy to build in America again, arguing that the prior administration’s Clean Power Plan 2.0 made it virtually impossible to build new natural gas or coal plants — together with nuclear the sources he said run the country — and that his administration would ease construction of power plants, transmission lines and pipelines.

Wright said energy should be a nonpartisan, pro-energy issue, and that the administration’s objection to wind and solar is the subsidies, which he said drove up electricity prices and destabilized the grid without adding supply the country needed.

Why it matters

The interview pairs an investment headline — $90 billion announced in Pennsylvania in a day — with the department’s blackout-risk warning, presenting permitting reform as the single lever for both, as Wright argued it.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: Secretary Wright’s statement that Pennsylvania energy investment announcements reached $90 billion that day, up from $70 billion. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no verdict is published from this page.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, “Secretary Wright Joins CNBC’s Brian Sullivan – July 15, 2025”, 2025-07-15 (official upload, embedded above; published 2025-07-15). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.