President Donald Trump’s Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is warning that the United States is at risk of major widespread blackouts similar to the power cuts that recently shut down most of Spain and Portugal.
In a new interview, Burgum said the blackouts in Europe were caused by over-subsidizing intermittent renewable energy sources.
However, he warns that America is now “dangerously close” to suffering from similar “rolling blackouts and grid failure.”
Speaking to David Freeberg on “The All-In Podcast,” Burgum admitted that the artificial intelligence (AI) “arms race” with China keeps him “awake at night” due to the amount of electricity that the technology requires.
“We just saw in Spain, they were celebrating on April 12th of this past month that they’d shut down their last coal plant,” Burgum explains.
“A week after that, they were celebrating the fact that they had their first day of 100% renewables on their system.
“Then, the next week, they were a global news story because people were trapped in subways, all airline flights canceled, hospitals were panicking with a lack of power because they had a rolling blackout and grid failure.”
Burgum attributed the devastating blackouts to a fundamental flaw in relying solely on intermittent power sources like solar and wind.
“It just defies physics,” the Interior secretary noted.
“You can’t run an electrical grid with just intermittent power.
“You cannot run with something that is based on intermittent, which is the definition of solar or wind, because the sun doesn’t shine at night, and the wind doesn’t blow every day.”
Burgum then said that the U.S. is teetering on the edge of a similar fate due to misguided energy policies embraced by the Biden administration.
“We became dangerously close to that right now,” the Trump official told Friedberg.
“We’ve got parts of our country that are at risk for those same kind of—what I’ll call the Biden brownouts and blackouts—to happen.”
Burgum criticized the over-subsidization of unreliable green energy and the stringent regulations on stable base load power sources like coal and nuclear.
He argues that these measures, driven by the goal to “save the planet,” are jeopardizing national energy security.
“All we’re doing is potentially putting our own country at risk,” he stressed.
He continued by urging a reevaluation of energy policies to ensure a reliable grid capable of supporting the Trump administration’s technological and economic ambitions, especially in the face of China’s rapid energy expansion.
WATCH:
Spain faced severe blackouts just weeks after celebrating the closure of its last coal plant and a day of 100% renewable energy.
The grid, reliant on intermittent solar and wind, collapsed.
The blackouts led to people being trapped in subways, canceled flights, and hospitals in chaos.
