Interview: How the incoming administration can unleash American energy
My interview with Kimberly Guilfoyle from 11/18
Kimberly Guilfoyle recently interviewed me on what I think the incoming administration, including some promising new political appointees, can do to unleash American energy.
The full video and transcript are below. As a preview, here’s what I view as the top 5 energy policy priorities:
Liberate responsible energy development
End preferences for intermittent electricity
Set environmental standards based on cost-benefit analysis
Unleash nuclear energy from unscientific restrictions
Address climate danger through resilience and innovation, not punishing America
Kimberly Guilfoyle:
Joining me now, author of Fossil Future and founder of Energy Talking Points, Alex Epstein. Thank you so much for being on the program.
Alex Epstein:
My pleasure.
Kimberly Guilfoyle:
All right, that was a nice little clip that we played. I want to get your reaction to the cabinet pick for energy and your broader take of where we’re headed with respect to major policy shifts.
Alex Epstein:
I, like probably a lot of people, had opinions on who should take different kinds of personnel positions. When people asked me, I shared them. My number one pick for Secretary of Energy by far was Chris Wright. I was very, very happy about that. My number one for Interior was also Doug Burgum, so I had a good week energy wise—
Kimberly Guilfoyle:
Yes, you did.
Alex Epstein:
—last week. I would say with Chris in particular, if you see that clip, you can imagine, if people know my work, I’m very aligned with him. He and I came to very similar conclusions, actually mostly independently. I’ve known him for about 10 years. We once participated in a debate together against some climate catastrophist and did really well. One thing I particularly admire about Chris, in addition to just his vast energy knowledge and incredible leadership ability, is just his integrity.
This is a guy who runs a multi-billion dollar public company and is willing to say stuff like that. I think when you’re thinking about appointees and this kind of thing, you really want somebody whose character you can trust. Chris has shown that whatever anyone else is doing or saying, he’s going to do what he thinks is right. And I usually think what he thinks is right is right so I’m very happy.
Kimberly Guilfoyle:
Okay, so Biden officials had a primary goal of looking at America’s fossil fuel resources. Contrast that if you can with what you expect from both the Trump Energy and Interior departments.
Alex Epstein:
Well, I think both of them align around this idea that’s become popular of unleashing American energy and what I would call energy freedom policies. There the idea is that we want as much energy as we can get, as long as it’s cost-effective. If it’s expensive and unreliable, that’s not useful at all. That’s a waste. We need it to be low cost, reliable, and on a huge scale. Ideally would provide more than enough for ourselves and then can actually empower our allies around the world.
I think both Governor Burgum and Chris Wright are very into this idea. I think a way to capture their idea, don’t attribute this to them, but this is how I would characterize it as “best of the above.” Often people say “all of the above” like, “Hey, let’s just use everything whether it’s good or bad.” But that’s not what a free market does. We don’t want to use animal dung for energy even though we could. We want to use the best forms of energy, and that’s what a free market does. Chris is talking about liberty. It unleashes the best form of energy.
I know he’s really interested in: how do we unleash nuclear? If there’s more potential in solar and wind and batteries, then let’s unleash that. But let’s not give them any special preferences. If you unleash all of American energy, we just have huge potential, not just with oil, but also coal, natural gas, maybe geothermal, certainly nuclear. These guys are very focused on what I think are the right things versus being biased in favor of some industry. You don’t want to just go from an anti-fossil fuel bias to a pro-fossil fuel bias. You want to go to an energy bias to want the best energy for everyone.
Kimberly Guilfoyle:
Excellent, excellent answer. Just how vast is the bureaucracy inside these departments? Some of it’s quite daunting when you think about the numbers. What can be done on Day One? What are some of the longer term energy policy goals?
Alex Epstein:
The size of the bureaucracy is important, but it’s really a reflection of the real problem, which is the coercive restrictiveness of the bureaucracy. If you just had 10,000 people there twiddling their thumbs, that would suck because we have to pay them taxes—but the problem is they can stop us from drilling for oil. They’re stopping us from building new natural gas infrastructure, which we desperately need. We could almost double our natural gas production pretty quickly if we could build enough pipelines and export infrastructure.
But we’re prohibited. It’s not the number of bureaucrats that’s the main thing, it’s their incredible restrictive power. What you need to do—I’ve mapped this out in any politician or any who asked, just email me. Those guys know how to reach me. I’m happy to tell anyone. But basically you need to do five core things. Then there are a lot of specifics on each.
One is you need to liberate domestic energy production and infrastructure. Oil, coal, natural gas and all this infrastructure. You need to do that responsibly, but get rid of all these anti-human, anti-development forces that just think you have no right to impact nature.
Number two is you need to end preferences for unreliable electricity. We need to unleash affordable, reliable electricity, which means we need to stop preferring unreliable electricity.
Number three, setting environmental standards based on real cost-benefit analysis. Right now we have this idea that any amount of emissions you stop is a good thing. But if you stop all emissions, you just kill everybody. You need to have actual cost-benefit analysis so that we have really clean environment and really good industry—which is the ultimate thing we need to have to have a good standard of living.
Number four is we need to unleash nuclear energy. There’s all these ridiculous restrictions getting in the way of nuclear, which is the cleanest and safest form of energy. It eventually could be the cheapest form of energy, but we need to do all kinds of things with what’s called the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Then number five is we need to address CO2 emissions in a different way instead of punishing America, which makes no sense, in the name of a fake climate catastrophe. There’s climate change but not a climate catastrophe. We need to unleash climate resilience. Make ourselves so we can face any climate—and we need to unleash energy innovation. Because the only way you’ll actually get lower emissions ever is if we make lower emission energy so cheap that China and India choose to buy it. Right now China’s building 300 new coal plants because that’s the cheapest thing to do. If you want to change that, don’t prostrate America, liberate America.
Kimberly Guilfoyle:
I like that a lot. We hear a lot about cutting red tapes and really exciting things with DOGE and government efficiency. Elon says he is going to cut $2 trillion. What is that red tape as it relates to energy or anything else that you have focused on?
Alex Epstein:
I’ll give you a few examples. There’s a lot of these. But one is in the realm of liberating domestic production and infrastructure. There’s something called NEPA, which is the National Environmental Policy Act, which is a very flawed piece of legislation. That is the number one delayer of projects. Projects can be delayed by 10 years or more, totally unnecessarily, based on this thing called NEPA.
What you need to do is you need to do certain things to NEPA. There’s technical terms like committing NEPA to agency discretion. But basically you need to make environmental review a very efficient process and not one that activists can just keep initiating over and over and over. That’s probably the number one thing.
In the realm of electricity, you need to get rid of all the preferences for unreliable electricity at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Instead of focusing on reliability and cost, they’ve started focusing on climate. You need to get rid of that. Your job is not to protect the climate. They can’t do that, they shouldn’t do that. They should focus on affordability and reliability and there’s a lot of specific things they could do there.
Then I’ll give you one more. In nuclear, what’s called the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, they measure nuclear danger in a way that overstates the danger of nuclear by a factor of 50. It’s technically called the “linear no threshold” model of danger, and it’s just a disaster.
One thing I try to stress to people is, you need to understand at the high level we need to unleash this, but then you need to understand all the details. This is the thing that I’ve been working on for the past year and a half in case we had such an administration—working out the details in every little respect. I don’t really work with a lot of people, but if anyone is working on this and they want to know the exact game plan to do in every area, just email alex@alexepstein.com and I’ll help you out.
Kimberly Guilfoyle:
Well, there you go. I love it. One stop shop here as well. Some of the media have attacked Chris Wright for not having the government experience. We’re seeing some of these attacks on some President Trump’s picks. Is that actually a weakness here? How do you see it?
Alex Epstein:
Wait, sorry, I don’t understand. What’s the specific thing?
Kimberly Guilfoyle:
Some people have attacked Chris Wright saying that he doesn’t have government experience. That he wasn’t “a good pick.” Is that actually even a weakness here?
Alex Epstein:
I think it depends. In general, I want to say to people, both sides I would say, should not be so partisan about things. I wish that we were in a world where people would just look at the picks on the merits, and if you dislike certain picks, then you should say so. If you like certain picks, you should say so. But it’s suspicious when everyone says, oh, “all the picks are amazing,” or “all the picks are the end of the world.”
I can say for Chris, Chris is not the end of the world. Chris is the beginning of the world, if anything. That is an amazing pick.
“No government experience.” Well, that would be a problem if there were no one else in the Department of Energy and he was literally the only person there. But in fact, knowing an amazing amount about the breadth of the energy industry—Chris has a background in fusion from MIT, has worked in geothermal, is on the board of one of the leading nuclear innovators in the world, Oklo, is a legend in oil and gas for his work in the Shell Revolution and in oil field services. This guy knows a crazy amount. That’s rare.
Not to be immodest, but I know a lot about energy. It’s rare that I go to dinner with somebody and learn a lot about energy. Chris is one of the people that that’s the case for. He knows a ton about energy, he’s very pro-liberty, so he understands how free market policies work. He’s an incredible leader and as part of being an incredible leader, he knows how to pick the right team so that they can handle all the logistics.
Of course he needs help navigating the bureaucracy, learning about the White House. I know for a fact that a lot of smart people are already helping him and will help him. You should be really excited about this pick if you want energy in America to be better.
Kimberly Guilfoyle:
All right, well we certainly do. I’m very excited about the pick because you’re excited about the pick and you’ve explained it very well and all the research and your expertise in this area. I’m sure that he will also rely and consult with you, which will be a fabulous thing. I’m really happy about Doug Burgum, if you want to take a moment to talk about him and that pick for the Interior.
Alex Epstein:
Yeah, so again, the reason he was my number one pick for Interior is—this is true with both Chris and Doug—that it’s a very rare thing that you get somebody who’s an exceptional entrepreneur and who knows a lot about a field and is willing to serve in government. Just most people aren’t and I get it. Look, for various reasons I’m not ever serving in government. I admire these guys who are willing to do it.
Kimberly Guilfoyle:
I do too.
Alex Epstein:
Governor Burgum is somebody who was incredibly effective in North Dakota. I’ve talked to him quite a bit. He knows a shocking amount about energy, period. But particularly for somebody who has a background in the computer industry, was a star at Microsoft and sold a software company for over a billion dollars. This guy is like a proven leader in business and in government. His government in particular has dealt extensively with some of the most crucial issues at EPA, but also Interior. He and his team already are very familiar with those issues.
Kimberly Guilfoyle:
Love it.
Alex Epstein:
If you have somebody who understands industry and all the roadblocks and has great leadership ability—and DOI (Department of Interior) is a massive, massive thing. Leadership is really good. I’m not claiming that I influenced this by the way. I’m just saying when people asked me, I said, “This is my number one pick,” because it’s a very rare set of attributes together.
We should take advantage when people like this are willing to serve. Because a lot of people, I won’t name any names, but a lot of people want these positions because they think it’s cool to be Secretary of Energy or Secretary of the Interior. I hate that motivation. You should only want it if you are plausibly the best in the world. These two are both plausibly the best in the world. It’s very exciting that they’re in those positions.
Kimberly Guilfoyle:
Excellent. I’m excited about it too. Alex Epstein, thanks so much for being on the program. Everyone, please go check out EnergyTalkingPoints.com and Fossil Future, great book. Thank you so much.
Alex Epstein:
Thank you.
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Great news, the future is looking more hopeful. Thank you for your work, Alex.
Thank you!