In the months since President Donald Trump returned to office, a little-known but deeply influential body inside the White House has been quietly driving one of Trump’s biggest policy ambitions: making the United States “energy dominant” by providing affordable, reliable energy to Americans while still generating enough electricity to power the boom in artificial intelligence.
This National Energy Dominance Council, first announced in November with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum as director and Energy Secretary Chris Wright as deputy, is modeled after the National Security and Economic councils. It is tasked with coordinating the federal government — from the Department of Energy to the Department of Agriculture to the State Department — toward achieving those goals.
The goal is to expedite projects, said Richard Goldberg, the senior counselor who helped conceive of and stood up the council. The council has been working with private enterprise to dramatically reduce the time it takes to get a project off the ground — from years, he said, to days.
It’s part of a larger administration drive to cut the red tape it believes stymies innovation.
