Ross over to the Mandy verse exactly, and we are we are right in front of course Field at twentieth and Blake, and and we thought my friend Chris would come down here, but he got a little busy, and so he joins us from wherever he wherever he is right now. And my friend Chris is actually one of the one of the smartest and most interesting people.
That's the way you just casually say, my friend Chris, Yeah, like he's just some dude, you know, buddy, he is my buddy.
Yeah, but he's also really one of the smartest people I know. And somebody figured that out because Chris Wright is now Secretary of Energy gig kind of not a bad gig, except he has to go to DC a lot, which is not as good as being here in Colorado. Chris, right, welcome back. It's good to talk to you again.
Hey Roth, Hello Ross and Mandy. Great to be with you guys. And Ross. Yeah, this is only my second trip back to Denver since mid December. So yeah, lives and I live in DC.
Now it's it's probably still worth it. Let me ask you a couple of questions that before we get to energy policy stuff, and just give me some quick answers, because we got lots of stuff to talk about. Were you surprised when you got the job offer?
Well, I'd had a dinner with Trump a month a year before, and he said, would you do it? I said I would, and so actually I wasn't surprised.
What is Donald Trump like in person when you're talking with him?
You know, in public, he's always talking, and he's loud and boysterous. In private, he listens a lot. He asked questions, he asked follow up questions. He wants to learn, he wants to understand. So I'd say, very very personable and very inquisitive.
Chris.
When you were having that conversation a year ago with Donald Trump, did he express to you the direction that he would like to see the Department of Energy go in? Did you guys have that kind of conversation about policy?
Then? Well, what I was so impressed with him by was here's an East Coast real estate developer, but he was very passionate about energy. He thought energy was the most important industry. He thought lower energy prices were good for America and good for Americans, and he thought much more American energy production would be good for our economy, and good for our global security. And I was like, I agree with all three of those one.
Hundred percent, Chris, did you have to give up ownership stake in your company, Liberty Energy to take the job?
Owe everything? I had their resign from the company, sell every share of stock in the company I founded, resigned from all the other boards I'm on, including nonprofit boards. I had to sell crazy stuff that has nothing to do with energy but potentially could so. As my wife and I joke all the time, we didn't go to DC to better our financial situation. You know, we're there to serve our country, and you know, whatever sacrifice it took we did, we did.
All Right, one more question for you, and then we want to talk some policy stuff. I don't know that every listener will be away of the report that you put out for quite a few years in a row, and I would like you to describe that report and tell us why it's important to you, because I think understanding that will help people understand how you think about energy policy.
Well, in January of twenty twenty, Blackrock the biggest owner of public equities in the world, and you know they own about ten percent of every public company there is. So they were a big owner of Liberty, and the head of that sent out a letter to all public company CEOs and said they should published their paras aligned zero twenty fifty plan. And look, as a guy who studied energy and climate change, my whole life net zero
twenty fifty is just a horrifically bad idea. And even the people in the climate movement that do climate economics show it to be a terribly bad idea where you spend a dollar and maybe get a dimes worth of
benefit a couple generations in the future. So seeing that, to me, it was like, instead of just speaking on climate change, I'm going to write a book or a report just elaborating where energy comes from, how it's changed with time, how it's tied to human flourishing, and write about climate change and climate economics and just show the world has a lot of big problems and climate change is a real physical phenomenon, but it's just nowhere close
to the world's biggest problem, not even remotely close. Chris, do you think that?
And I want to talk about a little policy question here. Do you think that we're finally ready in the United States to fully embrace some form of nuclear. We just passed a bill here in Colorado that adds it to the list of green energy things that we can embrace in our green dream being promoted by our governor here. But we really had our time getting it off the ground with the sort of small modular technology that's coming along. Now, what are your thoughts about nuclear as part of the portfolio?
Wo So, Mandy, you know, in high school I was passionate about nuclear and how dirty I was. But I went to college to work on nuclear, so I am passionate about it. But we haven't built any meaningful nuclear in this country for over forty years, so we've lost that industrial muscle and techniques to build it. But it's a great energy source that works whether the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. It takes a small amount of land and materials to develop a lot of energy.
So I think we're going to see nuclear start growing again. It will take some time, but one of the companies I was on the board of before getting my new job was a small modular reactor company. I'm a believer in this next generation nuclear and one of my goals and one of President Trump's goals, is to get the nuclear renaissance started during the Trump administration, and I believe we will achieve that.
Just follow me off, Chris, So, do you think the nuclear renaissance will include a blend of large facilities and SMO. Do you think one of those is going to be very dominant.
I think it will be a blend. Like there's the US Nuclear Technology is going to take the US large reactor technology and build three of these reactors in Poland. You know that deal will be going relatively soon. It's near finalizing a deal for that. There are definitely utilities
in the US interested to build more big nuclear. The last one's built Vocal, so the only plants we built really in recent times where large nuclear plants unfortunately had huge cost overruns and all that, And I think a lot of people thought that's the end of big nuclear, It'll only be small modular reactors going forward. That might be true, but I hope it's not true. Small modular
are nicer because they can be done faster. They're fourth generation reactors, like if everything in the world goes wrong, they automatically shut themselves off. They're very safe, and they're scalable because they come in small pieces. But given the growth and electricity demand we're going to see in the next five ten years because of AI and because of restoring manufacturing in our country. Again, we're going to need
a lot of new electricity. Most of it, just given the economics of today, is going to come from natural gas. But I think we've got to get nuclear into that mix, and I think it could be ross. I think it could be a mix of both FMRs and some more of these larger reactors built.
Chris, what is the policy of the Energy Department now? How is that shifting from the policy decisions and choices that were made by the prior administration.
Well, when I listed by nine points, the first one is if it's a policy of energy addition, not energy subtraction. So it is an abrupt pivot. That Energy Department under the Biden administration was entirely focused on climate change, or at least the name climate change. They didn't do things really aligned with that. Really, their position was we're against hydrocarb and we're going to look for ways to put barriers in front of hydrocarbons. And if I can, I'll
tell you one quick story. Everyone remembers the pause on liquefied natural gas export terminals that Biden announced in January of twenty twenty four, so the last year of the term, leading into election year, they announced they were no longer going to grant licenses for LNG export because they wanted to study the impacts on climate change and on costs of natural gas in the United States. The latter ones, of course, a very thoughtful thing to be concerned about.
What I learned getting into the Department is they'd already done a long study, one hundred page study on exactly this topic and the conclusion they found, and it was done by some people from the National Labs and working in the Department. The conclusions that they found was that increasing US LNG exports would at a small level, lower global greenhouse gas and have no meaningful impact on US
natural gas places. I did if they should have tripled down, And of course they didn't even study the larger question of is it good economically for the United States to grow the exports of our fastest growing export and second largest export for our country. So the overall economic impact for the US is of course hugely positive. But their study on prices was no impact on prices and reducing
greenhouse gas emissions they didn't like that answer. They buried the study probably probably hoped it would never seen by the day. But I released it about a week ago. And so one of the things that myself and President Trump believes strongly in is we're going to be the credible people. We're going to be open about what we're doing, why we're doing it. We're going to publish our data and share our thoughts. Look, I'm on media all the
time talking about energy. I'm not spinning it politically. I'm just talking honestly about energy. Rock I should have mentioned when you asked me before about that report I write called Bettering Human Lives twenty twenty four is the last version of it. People can find it online. But yeah, Ross,
I'm rolling the same way I rolled before. Energy is just too important to make political and to drive energy expensive and push industry out of our states and out of our country, all in the name supposedly of fighting a climate crisis. That's really destructive for America, and frankly it's dishonest as well. But we're not doing that anymore. So big pivot, Big pivot.
All right, give me a quick answer on this one. This is sort of a political question but when you took over the job, did you find staff, either senior staff or junior staff resistant to your new approach? Did you find an institutional bias toward thinking that climate change is the most important thing? Or are you finding that your staff at all level or end levels are very much breaking your correct viewpoint.
So it's a mix of the two. Ross the Department of Energy, about thirty percent of the employees are former military members. So it's not like Department of Interior or EPA where it's almost entirely left in the department. The OE is kind of a mix of the two. And there's a lot of scientists, of course, honest scientists are pretty sober about climate. What are there institutionally people who want to grow government and yet So I would say it's a mix of the two, but not nearly as
bad as you would think. Plenty of people that are like, oh, thank god, we can be honest again. We can be outward and honest, and we can disagree. I don't have a problem with disagreement, But yeah, I would say pleasantly surprised.
Chris Stone from the tech Line is a great question.
In addition to nuclear we need to update the US electrical grid. Is there a plan to do that?
Yeah, Mandy, this is just a huge question because during Biden administration, we had almost no growth in US electricity demand, yet prices went up over twenty percent. Now we're going to see rapid growth because of AI, this restoring of manufacturing. So we've got to build a lot of new generating capacity. We've got to strengthen our grid, make it more secure, not just from demand, but from you know, sabotage, cyber attacks from our adversaries overseas. So it's a huge challenge,
but it's doable. We can grow electricity production and keep prices flat. That's going to be very hard to do, but that's probably my single top priority is advance our electricity capacity to accommodate growing industries and stop the price rises that have so hampered Americans over the last years.
Chris, In recent days, in recent weeks, there's been a lot of talk in some market turmoil around terrats and I don't want to drag you into a larger tariff discussion because you don't set that policy. But I have a narrower question for you, how, if at all, do you see tariffs impacting your job and the and the energy industry broadly speaking.
So since energy is sort of its infrastructure, it's foundational for society. I was an advocate, and I would say successful advocate that there's no tariff on energy of any kind. That principle the President brought into and held onto. The other broader picture. For the President, really the indigenda was driven by two things. One is, he wants to reindustrialize America. All the stuff that we shut down our factories here and stuff gets made in Asia and then gets shipped back.
That's very disturbing to the President, as it is to me and this whole administration. He wants to reindustrialize America and have those incentives to build things in our country. Again, that's the bigger picture goal of tariffs. And then he's also frustrated that other countries we export to make it harder than they should for US to sell goods abroad. So you know he's trying to and he will spur
a negotiation. Israel immedia announced no tariffs on US imports, So I think you're going to see other countries lower their barriers to American exports. We're going to get fairer trade. But we will also have at least a base level of ten percent tariff that'll be in place that will incentivize rebuilding and retooling of America, so more of our manufactured products will be made in America again. So he's tried to get farer trade and reindustrialize America.
Chris, one last question for me, and that is the Department of Energy was founded in nineteen seventy seven, and what explicit goals was to reduce and eliminate dependence on foreign energy source.
Is that silly goal?
And if so, I impossible in this world economy that we live in.
Well, there's always going to be some trade in exchange of products. But look, I'm very proud to say today the US is by far the world's largest producer of oil, and we are actually a small net exporter of oil. We are by far the world's largest producer of natural gas, and we are the largest exporter of natural gas on the planet. So at some level we've achieved energy independence. We produce more energy today of all forms than we consume for the first time since the nineteen fifties early
nineteen fifties. So American energy production is surging. We're strong there. It's giving US much greater geopolitical leverage to deal with a Ran or Venezuela or Russia. So I think America is in a good position there. But we'll continue to grow and strengthen our energy system because it helps Americans economically and it gives us greater geopolitical strength. So Mandy, yes,
that goal is still there. We're just going beyond that goal, not just becoming a net exporter, but we're going to become a large net exporter of energy.
All right, Chris, And my last question for you, possibly the most important one, sock sock shoe shoe or sock shoe, sock shoe.
Sock sock shoeshoe because he's.
Not a maniac.
He's a good and decent human being, exactly.
It's like that's how you put your shoes off. He didn't have to think very long about that, but that's because he went to MI T so he understands all the right answers. Oh boy, Secretary of Energy, Chris, right, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to come join us. I know you're you're touring around Colorado visiting national facilities and having some conversations, so welcome home, even if only briefly.
Thanks so much, Ross. I appreciate you, my friend. Sorry I didn't get to see in person this time, but I'm sure I will next time. Appreciate the great show that you and Mandy do and you're pushing for American freedom and prosperity. Thank you very much for your great show.
All right, thanks Chris. All right, that was Secretary of Energy Chris right for a founder, former set but sell all that stuff of Libert Energy with if you don't know, second biggest fracking company in the world, serious company, and said where he started. He is really one smartest people I've ever.
Nice to hear someone in that position. It has a very realtic approach to energy, you know what I mean, Like, it's not pie in the sky, it's not this stuff we don't have the technology to do. Yeah, we're gonna do it, any kind of thing. It's just it's nice to hear someone who that we're going to do this in America is going to flourish.
And I just like that.
I also love that there's someone there who's that principles. You know, if you hang out with him, maybe you'll talk energy. But a lot of times we talk economics, and we talk about freedom and the Constitution, and he really cares about that stuff.
I know, people don't belong in Washington, you know.
Isn't that weird? What was your What was your main takeaway from that conversation.
My main takeaway is that we're all in on whatever can help us succeed and flourish in the country. And that's all I want. Like, if it is wind technology, if it's solar, if it's nuclear, if it's liquefied natural gas, I want all of the above. I want everything that's going to help us continue to flourish provide lower energy costs. I don't know about you, but I've been following along the energy prices in Germany and Spain very very closely because they're both all in on green energy. It has
destroyed Germany's industrial sector, yeah, absolutely destroyed it. And even in Spain, where they have a beautiful coastline and wind and sun, their energy prices are some of the highest in Europe. So it's like, Okay, let's be real about what all this is going to cost. If you want to go green. Let's stop saying it's going to be cheaper, because it's not. Clearly. So it's nice to have somebody with a realistic view who has that kind of depth of thinking.
Energy is life, and you don't want life to be more expensive than it has to be. Cheap. Energy is a whin human for everybody.
It is human flourishing.
And that's Chris's report is all about human flourishing. All right. So we gonna do a lot more baseball over the course of the show. So we're going to hit a quick break here when we come back. If all goes according to plant Voice of the Rockies, Jack Corrigan, it's going to join us right here and come stay hi to us. We're at twentieth and Blake, and if you stop by an eleven forty can try to beat Mandy out of the day and win some tickets to the
Rockies game. Will be right back. Is currently gray for text.
Throw just asks the weather a little bit gray, a little.
Bit chilly, but not horrible, No, not horrible, not snowing. All right, We'll be right back.