Chris Wright: nuclear fusion will soon power the world

Don’t worry too much about planet-warming emissions, the US Energy Secretary has told the BBC, because within five years AI will have enabled the harnessing of nuclear fusion – the energy that powers the sun and stars.

Chris Wright told me in an interview that he expected the technology to deliver power to electricity grids around the world within eight to 15 years and that it would rapidly become a big driver of greenhouse gas reductions.

His claims will likely surprise even enthusiasts for the technology.

Harnessing the energy released when atoms fuse together could produce vast amounts of low carbon energy but most scientists believe commercial fusion power plants are still a long way off.

“With artificial intelligence and what’s going on at the national labs and private companies in the United States, we will have that approach about how to harness fusion energy multiple ways within the next five years,” said Mr Wright.

“The technology, it’ll be on the electric grid, you know, in eight to 15 years.”

Scientists believe nuclear fusion, which Mr Wright studied at university, could one day produce vast amounts of energy without heating up our atmosphere.

But it’s a very complex process. Replicating it on Earth involves heating atoms to temperatures many times hotter than the sun.

President Donald Trump’s controversial energy chief also urged the UK government to lift the de facto ban on fracking and issue new oil and gas licenses in the North Sea.

The US Energy Secretary warned the Trump Administration had “serious concerns” about Europe’s reliance on Chinese renewable technologies.

“It looks like the Chinese could control what’s going on with your energy system,” he said.

He repeated the claims made by Donald Trump that the UK and Europe’s effort to transition away from fossil fuels to low carbon energy is driving deindustrialisation and impoverishing their citizens.

Mr Wright is in Brussels ahead of Donald Trump’s second state visit to the UK next week. The US President will meet Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and will attend a banquet hosted by King Charles at Windsor Castle.

During the BBC interview the US Energy Secretary said fracking – releasing oil and gas trapped rock formations underground – could have a “tremendous” impact on the UK economy.

Mr Wright, who has founded and run fracking companies in the US, suggested the oil and gas the process would produce could “bring back manufacturing and blue-collar jobs and drive down not just electricity prices, but home-heating prices and industrial energy prices”.

Reform UK recently said it would encourage fracking in the UK if it were to win the next election, but the British Geological Survey has warned the potential for the technology to produce large amounts of oil and gas in the UK is likely to be limited.

Mr Wright defended the billions of dollars of cuts the Trump Administration has made to renewable energy subsidies. He said wind power has been subsidised for 33 years and solar for 25 years.

“Isn’t that enough?” the Energy Secretary asked: “You’ve got to be able to walk on your own after 25 to 30 years of subsidies.”

The Energy Secretary also stood by the report issued by the Department of Energy in July which said the threat of climate change has been exaggerated.

Among a series of controversial claims, the report said sea level rise is not accelerating, that computer models of the climate exaggerate future temperature rises and that climate scientists overlook beneficial aspects of climate change like the fact that high densities of carbon dioxide promote plant growth.

Earlier this month more than 85 international scientists claimed it was riddled with errors and misrepresentations and that data had been “cherry-picked” – selectively chosen. The scientists also called into question the academic standards of the five authors of the paper.

Mr Wright told the BBC he believes it is climate scientists who use data selectively. “Cherry-picking data in climate science, in the media, by activists and by politicians is the norm,” he said.

He acknowledged that climate change is a “very real, physical phenomenon” and said that he believes the world will decarbonise: “It’s just generations from now, not two or three decades from now.”

He said he was delighted his report had prompted such vigorous debate: “We’ve got a dialogue back and forth about climate change in a public forum. I’ve wanted that for 20 years.”

He denied that the cuts the Trump Administration is making to climate science, including a proposal to slash the funding for the US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), would damage US research into weather and climate.

There has been speculation that the cuts could block the development of the next generation of weather satellites and could even lead to the closure of the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, which is responsible for the longest record of direct measurements of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.

“There are a lot of rumours about all sorts of terrible things happening,” said Mr Wright, who claimed the US government is trying to restore “real science”.

He claimed: “One of the problems of science is it’s become so politicised in the climate world, if you deviate from the church, your funding gets cut off.”