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Secretary Wright Announces $13 Billion Return to Taxpayers on CBS Mornings Plus

September 24, 2025 · U.S. Department of Energy · 0:08:53

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

What happened

Energy Secretary Chris Wright joined CBS Mornings Plus on September 24, 2025, according to the Department of Energy video, after traveling through Europe urging leaders to loosen environmental rules and buy more U.S. gas, as the hosts described his trip.

Wright announced the Energy Department would return over $13 billion to taxpayers — over $100 per American family, as he stated the figures. He said the money had been passed and slated to be energy subsidies, that subsidies have been corrosive because they cost taxpayer money and led to more expensive electricity bills, so Americans lose twice, and that the administration is doing everything it can to stop the rise in energy prices, as he described it.

Pressed that electricity prices were up 5.5% and natural gas up roughly 13% over the prior year, as the host stated the figures, and asked why options were being taken off the table, Wright said the subsidies are 33 years old and an industry that cannot survive after 33 years without subsidies has no future, as he argued. He said solar development would continue unsubsidized, but that wind, solar and electric vehicles had reached only about 3% of U.S. energy and 2.5% of global energy despite massive investment, had made electricity more expensive and pushed industry and jobs out of the country without moving global emissions — a malinvestment, as he characterized it.

Why it matters

The announcement recasts cancelled subsidy funding as a taxpayer refund, and Wright’s defense — old subsidies, small energy share, higher bills — is the administration’s core case against renewable support.

Scoreboard watch

The announcement as stated by Secretary Wright on September 24, 2025: over $13 billion in slated energy-subsidy money returned to taxpayers, over $100 per American family. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no verdict is published from this page.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, “Secretary Wright Joins Tony Dokoupil and Adriana Diaz on CBS Mornings Plus – September 24, 2025”, 2025-09-24 (official upload, embedded above; published 2025-09-24). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.