As energy demand grows, New Mexico's 'tremendous resources' could meet need, Energy secretary says

New Mexico already has tremendous energy resources in oil and solar production, but growing commercial nuclear and geothermal production could help meet increasing energy demands, Energy Secretary Chris Wright told reporters in Albuquerque on Tuesday.

And he said one way for the federal government to meet that heightened energy demand is to get out of the way of private industry by reducing regulations, including permitting requirements for geothermal drilling and regulation of commercial nuclear reactors.

“They’re such high bars that we’ve just seen almost nothing happen in next-generation nuclear. Our goal is to get that out of the way, bring private businesses together and figure out what kind of nudge we might need to get shovels in the ground and next-generation small modular reactors happening,” Wright said during a news conference at the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History in Albuquerque.

The boom in artificial intelligence, which a Statista report pegs as a $66 billion industry in the U.S., will drive the energy demand, and U.S. and China are racing to dominate the technology.

Sandia National Laboratories was home to some of the earliest AI research, Wright said after a Tuesday visit to the labs — his latest stop on a tour of the country’s 17 national labs, which included a visit to Los Alamos National Laboratory on Monday. With its supercomputers and a recently announced partnership with OpenAI, LANL will likely be a key part of U.S. AI development.

U.S. consumption of energy grew little in recent years, but prices went up over 20% nationally, Wright said.

“Now, we have huge demand growth from AI — from resource and manufacturing in our country for building AI to a huge demand growth of electricity,” Wright said. “We need to handle this better. We need to grow our electricity production from sources all over the map.”

Wright has a background in both next-generation geothermal energy and small modular nuclear reactors. As Liberty Energy CEO, Wright helped expand oil and natural gas production. His company also invested in Fervo Energy, a geothermal company, and he is on the board of an advanced nuclear fission startup. The Energy Department has some “creative ideas that we haven’t done publicly yet” for what to do with spent nuclear fuel, Wright said.

“We’ve been temporary storage for a long time. I think you’re going to see some creative ideas that I think are going to lead to long-term storage solutions being developed,” Wright said. Multiple sites will probably be engaged in long-term storage, Wright said.

New Mexico is the location of the only permanent nuclear waste storage: the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, which only stores waste from nuclear weapons development. There is no permanent commercial nuclear waste storage facility in the country. A proposed facility in Nevada, Yucca Mountain, has been long delayed by community pushback.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission also issued licenses to two companies in 2021 and 2023 to build temporary nuclear waste storage facilities in Texas and New Mexico, approvals the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals’ vacated. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is appealing that decision to the Supreme Court.

The New Mexico Department of Justice filed a joint amicus brief in January supporting the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling.

“The hardships that would be endured by New Mexicans in the construction of these nuclear waste storage facilities in and near our state would be monumental,” Attorney General Raúl Torrez said in a statement.

Along with nuclear weapons development, New Mexico’s history and communities are intertwined with the legacy of nuclear waste. People living downwind of the first nuclear weapons test near Bingham have long advocated to be included in a federal program meant to compensate people suffering health effects from exposure to radiation because of nuclear weapons development. New Mexico is home to hundreds of former uranium mine sites, affecting the health of former uranium mine workers and generations of people living in communities with poorly contained mine waste, and was the site of the largest release of radioactive material in U.S. history — the 1979 Church Rock uranium mine spill.

Wright said he expects oil and solar energy production to grow in New Mexico and hopes to see continued growth of nuclear and geothermal energy production in the state.

“Whatever provides affordable, reliable, secure energy, this administration will do everything we can, which is mostly to unleash the private sector to allow those energy sources to grow,” Wright said.