On President Donald Trump’s first day in office as he returned to the White House in January, he declared a national energy emergency, saying that the current infrastructure is inadequate to meet the energy needs of the U.S. now and in the future.
That action helped frame the April 7 discussion at the first of the Rockefeller Center and Dartmouth Dialogue’s 100 Days Series, which examines the first three months of the second Trump administration.
Co-sponsors of the series are Revers Center for Energy, Sustainability and Innovation; the Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society; the Center for Business, Government and Society at Tuck, Dartmouth Democrats, Dartmouth Conservatives, and the Dartmouth Political Union. Members of the student groups helped to plan the series and are also taking part in the discussions as co-moderators.
Dan Brouillette, the secretary of energy in the first Trump administration from 2019 to 2021, and Kevin Knobloch, who served as chief of staff of the U.S. Department of Energy in President Barack Obama’s second term, spoke about American preparedness for future energy needs, to an audience of 160 people at the Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society, with 40 others watching a livestream.
The two men discussed such innovations in energy sources as wind, solar, nuclear, and geothermal, and how the private sector and government are working to mitigate the effects of climate change.
As energy demand has increased in the last three decades, so has U.S. production of oil and gas, and wind and solar, energy. “We are now the world’s largest producer of oil and gas,” Brouillette said. In the last 25 years the U.S. has gone from being a net importer to a net exporter of oil and gas.
Energy production makes up roughly 6% of the national gross domestic product, Knobloch said. The U.S. produces approximately 22% of the world’s natural gas, and leads Saudi Arabia in oil production.
But by 2030, Brouillette said, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has indicated that the U.S. “will be short on electricity. And that’s without the AI demand.”
The U.S. needs, in short order, “to build roughly five New York City-size grids in order to meet the current demand. When you look at what AI will add to the grid, we have to move to a different scale,” Brouillette said.
The questions are how to make that huge leap forward in energy production, what energy sources will be available, and what hurdles stand in the way of energy production, Brouillette said.
The U.S. has been in a continual state of transition when it comes to energy sources, from wood to coal to electricity, Knobloch said.
“We’re in transition again. What’s different now, as compared to colonial or World War II times, is climate change,” Knobloch said. Scientists and governments realize the dangers to the climate and global economies of emitting greenhouse gases. They also understand, he said that “we have a limited time to decarbonize our economy. ”
The key to decarbonization will be refinement and exploitation of already existing sources, such as geothermal energy and hydraulic fracking, and the development of new sources of energy, such as as smaller modular nuclear reactors which produce energy but, Brouillette said, have also been designed to eliminate the release of radiation in case of accident. Or, he added, some completely new energy source may emerge.
Knobloch, for his part, pointed to such alternate energy sources as fusion, the heat released by nuclear fusion reactions that can generate electricity; and green hydrogen which is produced by such carbon-free renewable sources as wind and solar and which also generates largely emissions-free energy.
“It’s exciting, what’s been happening—even if it hasn’t been a smooth ride,” Knobloch said. He also pointed to the length of time it takes companies to obtain the necessary permitting for new infrastructure, sometimes as long as five years.
“The whole process is bananas,” he said.
To a student question about how tariffs are affecting President Trump’s declaration of a national energy emergency, Knobloch said that he does not understand the economic theory in play.
“I think that’s an interesting discussion about is there a true emergency? What does that look like? What’s missing in this administration’s approach is explaining to us what problems they’re trying to solve, and where they’re headed,” Knobloch said.
Brouillette said he is not a fan of either tariffs, which increase prices in the near term for consumers, or government mandates, such as California’s proposed ban on the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035.
“You let consumers decide what they want to buy. If you make innovation a priority, the businesses are going to innovate and produce products that are going to be much more attractive to those consumers. And just by default, you could end up with increased economic activity, and you’re going to increase economic environmental stewardship as we go along,” Brouillette said.
Xander Dalke ’27, a double major in environmental studies and engineering, was somewhat skeptical. “I think a lot of the solutions to decarbonization we already have. Some of the talks around fusion I felt were overblown, and not enough emphasis was given to just rolling out solar and wind technology.”
“I was surprised by the amount of overlap and agreement. I expected there to be more of a debate, which goes to show the complicated and slow political process for our energy transition,” said Harper Richardson ’27.
While she would have preferred to hear more about increased use of solar and wind energy and moving away from fossil fuels, Richardson was “appreciative of how respectful they were, coming from a very polarized time. So that was refreshing.”
The discussion was the first of nine events in the 100 Days Series bringing to campus prominent politicians, experts and academics from across the political spectrum to analyze such subjects as the Ukraine-Russia war, state governance, Congressional checks and balances, education and tariffs.
