Americans wrestling with high electricity bills should put the onus on states that instituted policies leading to the retirement of “baseload” sources of power that could run continuously, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Wednesday.
Burgum, who leads the Trump administration’s National Energy Dominance Council, also said capital for new data centers for artificial intelligence won’t end up in places like California’s Silicon Valley and New England. No one is going to put data centers in places that have high electric rates, he said.
“The defining factor for site selection and for capital flows in this country is becoming reliable, affordable and secure energy,” Burgum said at the North American Gas Forum in Washington.
Burgum also said that California imports more than 60 percent of its oil from foreign countries — and he called that state as well as New England a “national security risk.”
