The Trump Administration is pursuing an expansion of baseload and dispatchable power generation, alongside its promised expansion of oil and gas production. The newly appointed Energy Secretary Chris Wright has asserted that “net-zero policies raise costs for American families and businesses, threaten the reliability of our energy system, and undermine our energy and national security.” DoE research funds will be assigned to fossil fuels, advanced nuclear, geothermal, and hydropower – “affordable, reliable, and secure energy technologies,” so not only no R&D support for wind and solar, also not for batteries or long-duration energy storage. Nuclear fusion, AI, high-performance computing, and quantum computing also feature in the Energy Secretary’s list of worthy research avenues. If none of the above is a…