The Trump administration is more willing to support loan guarantees and tax breaks for nuclear power than for wind and solar because it is “more American” than those forms of energy, the director of the U.S. Energy Dominance Council said on Thursday.
Jarrod Agen said nuclear power is more likely to be made from U.S.-made parts than wind and solar farms, so the administration is more willing to give it financial aid from the U.S. Loan Programs Office and support tax incentives.
“Nuclear is new in that we need to invest in it to get ahead – and it’s the long-term play that the president wants to put in place,” Agen told an event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It hasn’t had the proper kind of investment. It hasn’t had the focus that some of the other intermittent (energy sources) have had.”
Companies at the forefront of building nuclear reactors are American companies, he added.
Agen said building out nuclear power is the third prong of the Trump administration’s approach to winning the artificial intelligence race against China after extending the lifespans of aging coal plants that are retiring and increasing the efficiency of the existing electric grid.
In recent weeks, President Donald Trump has deployed a range of tactics to stop offshore wind expansion, which was a cornerstone of former President Joe Biden’s efforts to combat climate change but has struggled with soaring costs and supply chain snags.
Most notably, Trump’s Interior Department late last month issued a stop-work order on the Revolution Wind project off the coast of Rhode Island, which is 80% complete.
Agen dismissed criticism that revoking permits for nearly-completed renewable energy projects causes instability and uncertainty, saying the Trump administration is sending a signal that projects that will succeed will not be reliant on tax credits or subsidies.
“If you want to invest in a project that you can be financially viable in, and you’re not reliant on tax subsidies to do it, I think that’s the message that we’re trying to show and I think that we have seen success on the fossil fuels,” he said.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner and Valerie Volcovici; editing by Diane Craft and Lincoln Feast)