Energy Secretary Chris Wright Delivers Remarks at Alliant Energy Natural Gas Plant

We have the ability to power these two facilities here at Riverside for 10 days straight and that is incredibly important as you think about the needs of our system. If you think about this past year, we went from minus 22 degrees to 100 degrees in a six month window and just given where we are in terms of gas pipelines, having the reliability of LNG storage is absolutely critical to our security. to meet the needs of our customers and communities 24-7. Now you all saw the recent announcement here today that we received from the DOE 5.1 billion dollars worth of federal loan opportunity. And I'm going to say it again, 5.1 billion and it's an extraordinary investment for us. responsibility as a utility is to ensure that we have energy available when our customers need it, when they need us most, and to make sure that it's both reliable and affordable. That's what this loan program does. This loan program translates into basically the ability to save our customers up to 1.2 billion dollars worth of savings, driving affordability. And I'll say it again, 1.2 billion, that is just It's an amazing, amazing number that will keep our power costs affordable for those that we have the privilege to serve. So beyond the LNG facilities, we're going to be using these dollars to support upgrades, to invest in new generation facilities, new technologies, and so forth. Battery storage, every dollar that we invest is going to enhance our reliability, our system resiliency, and help to drive affordability and economic development in the areas and the communities that we have to serve. So, without further ado, I would like to introduce to the stage Director Baird for his comments. Thank you very much. Hey, good morning. Hey, what a privilege to be here in Wisconsin. So my mother was a badger, so I know that's going to relate to some of you. I'm from the Midwest as well. So I run the office called Energy Dominance Financing for the Trump administration. I'm proud to work with Secretary Wright. The reason I'm doing it is that we are really the muscle of Secretary Wright's common sense policies. So for more than 25 years, he's been using data to really determine, hey, what's the best route for America or even the world when it comes to the types of energy that make sense for us? And I'm proud to say this loan is a common sense loan. And what I mean by that is we're using it to add new generation. We're using it to add energy storage. We're using it to add LNG storage. Hey, Wisconsin is a brutal summer and winter place, and so you need to have that type of power in order to have power when you want it, when you need it, at a low cost. So I can tell you the office that I inherited, it's been around for 25 years. It was created under the George W. Bush administration. really to support like a nuclear projects you know back then it's had many iterations I would say that the last administration had a value system that did not care about affordability they really cared only about about reducing carbon emissions and I can tell you haven't looked at every project that they did just before we underwrite it and we do many of them the only question was hey what will this do to carbon emissions and that's I guess that's an important question but we're asking and what's important to this administration to Secretary Wright and President Trump is how do we get baseload power that's affordable for Americans that's the first question that we ask we need to secure affordable reliable energy and so it's a privilege to get to run the office that has that mandate and that's what we're doing we're proud to be here partner with Alliant we're proud to be a part of the 1.2 billion dollars of savings for Wisconsinites and Iowans. And we'll be proud to see the projects that come online with all these, this $5.1 billion of invested capital. So, thank you. And I have the privilege of introducing Wisconsin native and local, Brian Stehle, who's proudly serving Wisconsin as your congressman now. for now and I know that he shares these the same value system of wanting to have common sense affordable energy for this region thank you Secretary Beard, thank you very much. Secretary Wright, great to have you in Rock County to the Alliant Energy team, thank you today is an exciting day, it's all about affordable energy here in Rock County and across Wisconsin, I live here, this This plant powers my home and heats my home. It's personal, and it's personal for a lot of people that live in this region. Before I ran for office, I worked in the manufacturing sector for about a decade. First in Beloit, just south of us, at what was then Regal Beloit. And then later in Milton, Wisconsin, at Charter Next Generation. This area of the country has a lot of energy-intensive manufacturing that is dependent on the energy that's produced here. The energy that's produced here is really dependent on a lot of the men and women in the hard hats behind here. Would you give a round of applause to all the people at Lion Energy that do the work day in and day out? A lot of jobs that are dependent on this. The energy that comes from here and low-cost energy makes Wisconsin manufacturing in particular incredibly competitive. And when we have affordable, accessible energy here, our employers can compete and bring additional jobs into this region in Rock County and in Wisconsin, and that's good for people that live here. People that live here also go home at night, turn their lights on, and as you noted, in Wisconsin it gets down to about negative 20, and it's October, so it could either be the 100 or the negative 20, sometimes in the same day. And making sure that when you turn your lights on at night, when you turn your heat on in the winter, that you have access to affordable natural gas and affordable electricity is essential. And Director Beard, and in particular Secretary Wright in this administration, working with legislation we passed in Congress, redirected a grant program away from experimental Green New Deal energy into proven energy, proven natural gas, proven low-cost energy and heat for people here in Wisconsin. And the storage facility that is going to be built with this loan is going to be a huge cost saver for families right here in Racine County and for families across the region. As you're pulling that gas in through the pipeline, you can choose when you're buying. And so instead of on that negative 20 degree day being dependent on whatever the gas price is at that moment, you can fill up this storage tank in the shoulder season, say in October, and people don't have their heat on yet. We've had an amazing October weather. You can bring in that at a lower cost and then turn around and pass that savings on to hard-working families right here in Rock County and throughout the region on that negative 20 degree day and so this is all about taking proven technology using the power of the federal government to provide a loan to make the investment here in Alliant using the hard work of the men and women standing with us today in the hard hats to make sure that we're delivering that for working families and so at the of the day it's saying instead of experimental Green New Deal ideas let's use proven technology that we know that works to deliver lower costs for families right here and i couldn't be more excited from this administration from Director Beard and from Secretary Wright to deliver that to the team and alliance which delivers that to everybody that lives in this region and so today is an incredibly exciting day i'll add one thing this is also the future of technology right here here in Rock County. It was a couple weeks ago, Secretary Beard, you're going to get frequent flyer miles to Rock County. We're also investing in the next generation. There's fusion possibilities with Shine, which is only a few miles from here. And as we bridge that gap to the next generation of technology that doesn't take up hundreds of acres of our best farmland that we've ever seen in this entire world that's right here in Rock County, we're going to bridge that gap in the future. But this is proven technology for today. So I want to say thank you for coming. Thank you, Secretary. Thank you to the team at Alliant, because this is all about delivering lower costs. I now have an opportunity to introduce Secretary Wright. This is a gentleman that I've gotten to know that understands how important it is to lower costs for families in our region, to invest in proven technology. Please join me in giving a huge Wisconsin welcome, Secretary Wright. Wow, this is fantastic. These are the days that energize me and make me optimistic about America's future and about the direction we're going. So first, thank you to everyone that works at this plant. You make everyone's lives possible in southeast New Mexico. God bless you. And to hear the leader of Alliant Energy, to hear my colleague in the Department of Energy, and to hear Congressman Stiles stand up here and talk about energy as this service that makes human lives better, and that the most important thing is to deliver it reliably, whether it's scorching hot or freezing cold, to deliver it securely, to deliver it affordably, and following the map of what is the best road to deliver energy for the people in our region. That's how people should think about energy. I am inspired by all three of the people that spoke before me. And it's sad to say that's unusual. That is unusual today. As Greg Beard, who runs our Energy Dominance Financing Office, said, when we came in the door at the Department of Energy, they never evaluated the cost or security impact of all of the tens, hundreds of billions of dollars that were committed from the government. that wasn't even considered the cost what it would impact on citizens or people or the security or the reliability it was all about politics we're going Puerto Rico had two hurricanes that that devastated their electrical grid and the decision of the Biden administration I hate to talk politics but that's my job now I never talked politics about energy for decades but the decision of the democrats in power was we're going to make Puerto Rico the poster child for renewables we're not going to fix their existing generators we're not even going to focus money on like clearing ways for the power lines because we want to spend money on solar or wind they decided all solar in Puerto Rico when you have a cloudy storm for a week that doesn't do a lot for you but they didn't think about energy as this service that made people's lives better or possible they thought of it as a political football and that's just so wrong and if you want to know what happens if you do that just look across the Atlantic Ocean you know at the United Kingdom and Germany together with the United States the birthers of the modern world and the industrial revolution they just closed down all their energy intensive industry in the name of fighting climate change Germany spent half a trillion dollars to triple their electricity prices and produce 20% less electricity than they produced 20 years ago before they spent the half a trillion dollars. Like that's just, that crazy stuff happens today. I lived in California for 19 years. California's electricity production is also declining. The costs are skyrocketing. They have the highest adjusted poverty rate in the nation and they're doubling down on that energy policy and believe me we care passionately about the 40 million people that live in California they they should not have the highest adjusted poverty rate in the nation they should not have a population and business outflow that's just people not doing the math this project this company Alliance, this LNG storage, this uprate on natural gas plants, this is doing the math to make energy better for the humans and citizens. I am so proud. I'm so proud of the leadership and the workers at Alliance Energy. You're delivering energy to make people's lives better. That's what energy is about. When we decide where we're going to lend money from the energy dominance financing. It's not about politics. It's not about where it is and what sounds good or what feels good. You know, maybe that's more fun, but it's not to us. That's frustrating. It's just about the math. There's, there is a rigorous competition about where the limited taxpayer capital we have is going to go. We are here because these projects, this company Alliant won that competition because they had a project that just that looked at what are the challenges in our area it's really cold in the winter when you're at peak demand time and you've got existing pipelines it gets very expensive because you only get so much gas through that pipeline they did the math said we're going to do an out-of-the-box solution we're not on the Texas Gulf Coast or the Louisiana Gulf Coast we're going to make LNG in the heartland of America a thousand miles from any any tide water but the math said this makes sense we can buy gas when it's low priced and and turn it into power when power is at high price and gas is expensive and we're going to store not you know a few hours we're going to store days 10 days worth of gas so that our customers will have home heating they'll have affordable electricity they'll you know that's that's winning the math competition i i say winning the humanitarian competition so super proud and of course if you look at this plant you also know that the people at Alliant Energy in this town in this region care about their people the plant is spotlessly clean incredibly well maintained continuing to get better every day this this generator behind us that's 250 50 megawatts, you know, and we could have a 40-yard dash and run all the way around it. Like, that is incredible energy density. It just runs reliably every day, day in and day out. And why are businesses migrating north from Illinois into this area? And they want to build products here because the thinking here is about humans, is about business, is about jobs, about affordability. So super proud. Congratulations, Alliant. Congratulations, Southwest Wisconsin. Congratulations, Congressman Stiles. These are the leaders that care about people and are lifting us up. God bless you all. I am optimistic for America's future. Thank you so much.