← Videos · Energy & Permitting

Secretary Wright Announces Paducah, Kentucky Data Center and Power Redevelopment on Fox & Friends, July 29, 2026

July 29, 2026 · U.S. Department of Energy · 0:05:37

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

What happened

Energy Secretary Chris Wright, joining Fox & Friends from Kentucky on July 29, 2026, announced the redevelopment of the Paducah gaseous diffusion plant site, which he said, as he stated its history, was used to produce enriched uranium after World War II and had been out of service for more than a decade, according to the Department of Energy posting of the interview. Wright said, as he stated the plan, that the site would host several new natural gas power plants and a huge data center, bringing thousands of jobs and tens of billions of dollars of investment to rural western Kentucky. The program’s hosts put the privately funded investment at $100 billion, with about 3,500 construction jobs and 500 additional permanent jobs, as stated on air.

Wright said, as he stated it, that the project would produce more power than the data center itself consumes, with the surplus going to the grid to help lower electricity prices in the region and support additional new businesses. He described the effort, as he stated it, as part of the department’s American energy centers program reviving former industrial sites across the country for large-scale power generation, data centers, and advanced manufacturing — to bring jobs to rural America, lead China in the AI race, and lower electricity prices. He disputed, as he stated it, that data centers drive prices up, arguing that places that develop data centers alongside new, stable generation will see prices fall.

Why it matters

The Paducah announcement is a flagship example of the administration’s energy-for-AI strategy — pairing data centers with new generation on a legacy federal industrial site — with investment and job figures specific enough to track as the project proceeds.

Scoreboard watch

The Paducah figures stated on July 29, 2026 — a $100 billion privately funded investment, about 3,500 construction jobs and 500 permanent jobs, and generation exceeding the data center’s own consumption — are dated, checkable claims flagged for the scoreboard editor. No verdict is published from this page.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, “Secretary Wright Joins Steve Doocy on Fox News’s Fox & Friends - July, 29, 2026”, 2026-07-29 (official upload, embedded above; published 2026-07-29). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.