Secretary Wright Joins Joey Jones on Fox News's Fox & Friends - July 15, 2026

Announcing a temporary ban on the construction of new data centers, arguing the cost to New Yorkers is too high. These data centers require millions of gallons of water, straining the local supplies. And when powered by fossil fuels, they drive up our carbon footprint. They drive up costs for local rate payers. And I refuse to let those costs be passed on to New Yorkers, who already pay too much for their utility bills. But critics, including Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, say it could leave the U.S. further behind China in the race for AI. Energy Secretary Chris Wright joins us now. Secretary, thank you so much for joining us. This is the question. Will data centers make people pay more for energy? And we get a gambit of answers. I'd love to hear yours. First of all, Joey, thank you for your service to our country. And, of course, unfortunately, Governor Hochul has it exactly backwards. Data centers are the greatest tool we have right now to stop the rise of electricity prices and ultimately to bring them back down. It's the Democrat green energy policies that have driven energy prices up in New York State, actually shrunk their total electricity production. I mean, they banned fracking. They blocked a pipeline to bring natural gas, the biggest source of energy in New York. They closed the Indian Point nuclear reactor. They passed these crazy green energy mandates and an insane climate law. So the energy is expensive in New York and now sparse because of bad Democrat policies, nothing to do with data centers. In fact, that's the solution, not the problem. You know, it's not just blue states, though. Even my home state of Georgia put a moratorium. The county I live in put a moratorium on the building of data centers. Do you think part of the problem here is the messaging campaign? Do you think that the administration maybe could do better, at least speaking in these rural communities or at least the representatives in Congress in these areas, letting them know, one, why rural communities are the place they're going and, two, that they are a net positive and that they're not going to cost more money and take away their water? Joey, you're so right on that. This is a messaging struggle. There is these alarmist sort of fearmonger groups. Ten years ago, they were all fighting fracking. They were going to stop the shale revolution, telling people it would pollute the water and raise their energy prices and destroy the environment. Of course, the opposite was true, and no one even disputes that today. But now they've moved on to data centers. They're very effective at selling fear and scaring. And our coastal hyperscalers, natural connectors with rural Americans, they're not. And so, yes, there has been a messaging failure here. Both our administration and the industry needs to engage early and often with communities, hear them out, lay out the tradeoffs in front of them. I think the pluses in general are so much bigger than the negatives. These are home-run developments in your community. But this is America. We've got to get community buy-in to want this development in their community and not impose them on it. It can be done right. It will be done right. But if you've energy-starved your state and already driven up energy prices, as New York State has done, it's just the perfect scapegoat to say, these guys, not us, drove your energy prices up. Yeah, and to keep it on New York, Democrats, the partisanship of this issue, the Wall Street Journal op-ed that we have argues, it's an election year, and Hochul is trying to shift blame from rising electric rates caused by her climate policies. This is what it says. If Ms. Hochul is concerned about power shortages driving up utility rates, she'd push to repeal the state's anti-fossil fuel policies. Her data center, PAWS, recalls the de facto fracking moratorium imposed in 2008. Of course, you mentioned that. As a result, upstate New York has languished while Pennsylvanians next door enjoy more jobs and much lower energy prices. So, I mean, just back to the point that you brought up, this kind of likens itself to how they attacked fracking. And here we are, years later, knowing that most of that attack was completely false. Yeah, the Wall Street Journal got it spot on. Expensive energy is a choice that Democratic politicians have made across our country. Citizens are upset about it now, which I think is great. All of these decisions can be reversed. We can start to make energy decisions thinking about humans and math, affordability and jobs. There's no reason to have expensive, sparse energy in this country. It's just been bad political choices driven by Democrats. Yeah, I will say this, though. I wish they would put data centers in some of these high-rises and big cities that are starting to get vacated, because I like my view of cow pastures and rivers there in northwest Georgia. But I understand the need for them, and they do bring some commerce. So, Energy Secretary, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Joey.