With wide-scale layoffs, budget cuts and more, the past three months haven’t been easy for federal government employees and contractors.
However, U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright looked to provide some encouragement April 3 as he visited the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Golden campus.
In addressing NREL’s 4,000 employees — whether in Golden, at another campus or in the field — Wright told them how much he enjoyed his visit, saying, “Not all my days have been as awesome as today.”
Wright, who’s from the Denver area, has a background in oil and natural gas as well as solar, geothermal and nuclear energy. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on Feb. 3 and sworn in later that day.
Wright told NREL employees how they’re doing critical work, saying he wants to help them however he can so that NREL and other U.S. Department of Energy employees can “unleash all of your energies and talents” and “focus on science and technology, and not on bureaucracy.”
To that end, he said he signed secretarial orders to ensure work could get done faster and cheaper.
As an example, Wright and NREL Director Martin Keller explained how, after Wright assumed office, Keller asked Wright to help accelerate construction of the Golden campus’ Energy Materials and Processing at Scale, or EMAPS, facility. NREL broke ground on it last year and it’s expected to be completed in 2027.
As Keller and other NREL officials later explained, Wright did help accelerate the project by reducing permit processing and approval times for contracting and executing the construction work.
After addressing the NREL employees, Wright and Keller hosted a small press conference in the Energy Systems Integration Facility.
When asked about federal employee layoffs and whether the public should expect any more, Wright didn’t give a definitive answer.
President Donald Trump’s administration has previously stated it wants to eliminate government employee positions through reductions in force. Then, on April 1, the DOE announced it was preparing for a “restructuring” but didn’t say more, according to Politico.
Wright said the DOE’s headcount has grown about 20% over the last four years, but he felt that Americans only got “a little bit more restrictions in energy production” in return. He continued by comparing it to how he ran his business, saying he wants to make “government services as good as they are today, or better, but at lower cost.”
He then said the U.S. Department of Energy is evaluating how to “get better and smarter at what we’re doing” within the overall department and each subdivision.
“So, that is an ongoing process; we are midstream on that,” Wright said. “But frankly, it would be downright irresponsible if we weren’t doing this (evaluation).”
‘We have to move fast’
During both his meeting with NREL employees and the press conference, Wright announced a DOE plan to lease land to AI data centers in a public-private partnership. One possible site is NREL’s Flatirons campus.
This plan builds on a Jan. 14 order issued by then-President Joe Biden’s administration.
Wright said he believes this public-private partnership would help both sides, as the data centers would have land to build on and the DOE would get money and maybe additional computing power for its national labs. It would also help the United States stay competitive in the international AI race, Wright added.
Keller agreed that integrating data centers into the community is a very important discussion for the country, and he said he believes there’s great potential for collaboration between national labs and data centers, particularly regarding energy efficiency.
Overall, Keller said, he and his NREL colleagues are excited at the prospect of partnering with a data center.
“Thank you for pushing us, to ask us, ‘How can we go faster?’” Keller said to Wright about how his work has affected NREL thus far. “Because, here at NREL, we love to go fast, because we want to create a better planet, so we have to move fast.”
During the April 3 press conference, Wright also fielded questions about his stance on climate change and “climate alarmism,” as he described it, as well as Trump’s tariffs that were announced the previous day.
In addressing both NREL employees and the media, Wright championed advancing the United States’ electric grid by “increasing supply without impacting costs.” He said the country’s demand for electricity has been relatively flat for at least 20 years while costs have gone up, making consumers angry.
“We need to produce more electricity and stop the price rises that are making life tougher for consumers and making it harder for businesses to locate in the United States,” he said.
Wright said he believes NREL employees and others across the DOE would be critical components in reaching that goal.