This year, though, there was an elephant in the room, and it’s the current state of the US federal government. Or maybe it’s climate change? In any case, the vibes were weird.
The last time I was at this conference, two years ago, climate change was a constant refrain on stage and in conversations. The central question was undoubtedly: How do we decarbonize, generate energy, and run our lives without relying on polluting fossil fuels?
This time around, I didn’t hear the phrase “climate change” once during the opening session, including in speeches from US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and acting ARPA-E Director Daniel Cunningham. The focus was on American energy dominance, on how we can get our hands on more, more, more energy to meet growing demand.
Last week, Wright spoke at an energy conference in Houston and had a lot to say about climate, calling climate change a “side effect of building the modern world” and climate policies irrational and quasi-religious, and he said that when it came to climate action, the cure had become worse than the disease.
I was anticipating similar talking points at the summit, but this week, climate change hardly got a mention.
What I noticed in Wright’s speech and in the choice of programming throughout the conference is that some technologies appear to be among the favored, and others are decidedly less prominent. Nuclear power and fusion were definitely on the “in” list. There was a nuclear panel in the opening session, and in his remarks Wright called out companies like Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Zap Energy. He also praised small modular reactors.
Renewables, including wind and solar, were mentioned only in the context of their inconsistency—Wright dwelled on that, rather than on other facts I’d argue are just as important, like that they are among the cheapest methods of generating electricity today.
In any case, Wright seemed appropriately hyped about energy, given his role in the administration. “Call me biased, but I think there’s no more impactful place to work in than energy,” Wright said during his opening remarks on the first morning of the summit. He sang the praises of energy innovation, calling it a tool to drive progress, and outlined his long career in the field.
