President Donald Trump said Thursday that without energy dominance, the United States “can’t win” after he announced $700 million in funding to bolster America’s coal industry.
When asked by Breitbart News about the importance of dominating different forms of energy production, whether it be coal, liquefied natural gas, or oil, the president zoned in on artificial intelligence as one example in particular.
“Without it, you can’t win. As an example, AI is a big deal, whether we like it, not like it; it’s going to be amazing in many ways,” he said. “I think for medical it’ll be amazing, but without massive amounts of energy, you can’t even play the game. And we’re leading China by a lot in AI; I was talking to President Xi about it.”
He then lauded Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin for fast turnaround times in permitting approvals at the agency:
Lee Zeldin’s done so great because number one, fast approvals from professionals. You know, you’d have the best firms in the world submitting papers to ’em, and we didn’t keep them waiting for 10 years and then vote against them after 10 years… Guys would file with the environmental for a plant of some kind; after 15 years, they would be rejected. It was terrible. Now we have great professionals there.
The president added that the EPA is only greenlighting applications from legitimate professionals and allowing them to build their own electric plants so they do not take from the grid.
“We only accept plans from great professionals, but we give them fast turnaround, and it’s been really amazing. I think the biggest thing we’ve done, Lee, is we let these geniuses with all this money build their own electric plant,” he added. “We don’t take it from our grid; we let them build their own plant. They become a utility.”
“They’re building a plant, and at the same time they’re building electricity because if we didn’t do that, you couldn’t have anything…and we’re letting that happen too with car plants and other plants, if they want to build their own electric,” he added, noting “Excess energy they create will go back into the grid.”
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