The president's prime-time speech included false statements about the price of gas, the number of new power plants and the cost of electricity.
Pool photo by Doug Mills
CLIMATEWIRE | President Donald Trump used his 20-minute national address on Wednesday to attack immigrants, rant about former President Joe Biden and repeat a bevy of false claims — including on energy.
Trump made inaccurate statements about the price of gas, the number of power plants opening next year and the cost of electricity. As he spoke about affordability, Trump briefly touched on energy issues for about a minute.
Here are three fact-checks of Trump's energy claims.
“Within the next 12 months, we will have opened 1,600 new electrical generating plants, a record. And it's a record that won't be beaten by practically, I would say, by anybody, or certainly not.”
It is unclear what Trump is referring to in this statement. Building that many new power plants in a year would be essentially impossible: the construction of a new gas turbine takes about seven years, for example.
Energy demand is rapidly increasing due to the data center building boom. The Trump administration has sought to prevent a handful of aging coal-fired power plants from closing by pushing back their retirement dates, which can drive up consumer costs. At the same time, it has also worked to scuttle renewable power slated to come on to the grid, chiefly by going after offshore wind projects, including halting the construction of one...
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