U.S. Senator Katie Britt Questions Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Lowering Energy Affordability

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Katie Britt (R-Ala.) attended a Senate Appropriations Energy and Water Development Subcommittee hearing to review the President's Fiscal Year (FY) 2027 Department of Energy budget request with Energy Secretary Chris Wright. She highlighted her commitment to continue securing our grid, maintaining United States AI compute power and innovation dominance, and lowering energy costs for families across Alabama and the nation.

Senator Britt began her line of questioning by addressing the importance of ensuring ratepayers remain the first priority when considering data center development across the U.S.: "Let's start with data centers … We have to keep that compute power advantage. That is critically important … But in the larger conversation, as we have talked about this, we want to make sure that that advantage and the cost of that doesn't actually fall on family's power bills. Between [2021 and 2025], we saw residential power bills go up in this nation over 40%. It's totally unacceptable… When you're looking at data center heavy regions, wholesale electricity prices surged over 250% during that same time period … What do we do now? … I appreciate President Trump's leadership on this and yours as well. The Ratepayer Protection Pledge … your Energy Dominance Financing announcement as well. I think the combination of those two things ultimately froze rates in both Alabama and Georgia. So, we are very grateful for that …"

She continued asking, "But ultimately, when we're looking at the price right now, we've got to figure out how do we drill down and how do we actually lower rates, not just freeze them? … I want to see lower rates in Alabama … what do you have in mind that will ultimately help people have a more affordable energy bill?"

Secretary Wright outlined the Department's work to drive down the price of energy, responding, "Well, we worked with you and the Senate and the House to finally end the 34 years of wind subsidies and solar subsidies, so that if they can compete in a marketplace and with batteries or storage of some kind, deliver effective, reliable electricity, fine. But we subsidize on them killing the economics for existing infrastructure that was on the grid. So, we're ending that nonsense. We're focusing on, in the short term, how can we get more out of our existing grid? We're upgrading hydro facilities. We're upgrading natural gas facilities. We've restarted a nuclear power plant, which will have a ribbon cutting on very soon … We have a second restart underway, and there's more that are coming."

Senator Britt applauded the continued work of the Trump Administration to secure the grid and the necessity to have a workforce to go along with it: "The Biden Administration never had a strategic plan about how do we secure our grid? I appreciate the Trump administration coming forth and saying … we're going to have a national cybersecurity [strategy] … the actual strategic plan that you all put out … We do some work on this for the workforce sector at Auburn University [via SERC-3] … But I wanted to just see if you will use some of the money in your budget to make sure that we have grid security and the workforce to go along with it."

Secretary Wright responded in part, "Absolutely."

You can watch the Senator's full remarks here.

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