Energy Secretary Chris Wright didn’t mince words about the Trump administration’s new energy strategy.
“The One Big Beautiful Bill,” he said, “removes the nonsense and distortions from energy markets and unleashes American business to produce energy that works—without subsidies.”
But ever since the bill’s passage, pundits and reporters have alleged that the legislation will increase energy costs.
That’s not true, and here’s why.
By streamlining permitting, expanding federal leasing, and promoting technology-neutral reforms, the One Big Beautiful Bill clears a path for American companies which produce all different energy sources to meet the country’s soaring energy demands.
More energy production means more competition, which puts downward pressure on costs for consumers and businesses alike.
Most importantly, the One Big Beautiful Bill signals to the energy industry — and the rest of the world — that the U.S. government is again willing to trust American innovation to power the future.
That energy-intensive future is arriving faster than many realize.
Artificial intelligence is set to dramatically reshape the global economy, but it’s also about to put enormous pressure on our energy grid. According to MIT Technology Review, AI-specific electricity demand could reach 326 terawatt hours per year by 2028, more than all U.S. data centers consume today and enough to power nearly a quarter of American homes. That kind of growth would overwhelm a fragile, overregulated grid, and it would have led to supply shortages and higher costs if the Big Beautiful Bill was not passed.
The only way to meet America’s increasing energy demands is with fast, flexible, scalable power. And that’s where private sector innovation is stepping up.
Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) — compact, factory-built nuclear units — are a breakthrough technology, and America is currently the global leader in advancing the technology in terms of innovation and investment.
These systems are designed to provide safe, around-the-clock baseload power in exactly the places that need it most: data centers, defense facilities, industrial campuses, and rural areas. And unlike massive legacy reactors, SMRs can be built at scale and deployed fast.
However, under the old energy rules — slow permitting, endless litigation, and ideological roadblocks — this industry was being smothered before it could scale, limiting supply and artificially keeping prices high.
The Biden years were defined by scarcity and control — suppressing oil and gas development, dragging out permitting, and tilting the scales with special-interest subsidies. That model failed to meet America’s rising energy needs and left us more vulnerable to foreign suppliers, less resilient to demand shocks, and slower to innovate when it mattered most. The result was higher prices and uncertainty.
The Big Beautiful Bill changes that. It clears the path for these next-generation nuclear systems to finally move from prototype to the power grid. This will allow supply to catch up with demand, which ultimately lowers prices.
Battery technology is another front where the U.S. is pulling ahead, just in time to compete with China’s dominance in critical minerals and EV infrastructure.
The Wall Street Journal recently profiled how American industry is developing solid-state batteries that are safer, 50% longer-lasting, and more powerful than lithium-ion versions.
But like nuclear, battery innovation has been throttled by a federal policy regime that favored politically connected incumbents over real disruption. The Trump administration’s approach — and the reforms in its Big Beautiful Bill — end that favoritism and open the door for market-driven competition and rapid adoption, which will drive costs down for consumers.
America’s energy advantage has always been that it doesn’t have to wait on government ministries or global supply chains to meet its demand. The U.S. has the engineers, resources, and the entrepreneurial firepower to lead. Washington just needs to let it.
That’s why this energy policy shift— led by Secretary Wright and the rest of the Trump administration and driven by a vision of innovation, advancement, and prosperity — matters. Wright and Company are scrapping the Biden administration’s outdated, centralized model of energy planning — a model that is slower-moving, more costly, less reliable, and detrimental to economic growth— and bringing back a system that rewards performance, not one’s politics. It’s a strong bet on the power of American ingenuity, and it will pay off in no time.
Now, the course is set in a different direction.
Some critics still want to pull the emergency brake. They’d rather slow down American progress than admit that a free market is beating central planning. But that’s not what this moment demands.
AI, industrial reshoring, and global competition aren’t slowing down. We shouldn’t be fighting this momentum. We should be cheering it on.
The new law, and the vision behind it, puts us back on the right track. By modernizing permitting, enabling innovation, and trusting in American enterprise, it positions our country to meet the moment and lead in the decades to come.
We should welcome that shift — and accelerate it.
Ryan Costello is a former Member of Congress from Pennsylvania. He served on the Energy & Commerce Committee.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Flickr/U.S. Department of Energy)
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