“Don’t Worry Too Much”: US Energy Chief Points to AI as Climate Fix — Scientists Disagree

Fusion could one day reshape the grid, but researchers caution Wright’s timeline is unrealistic and risks distracting from urgent clean energy choices.

“Don’t worry too much about planet-warming emissions,” U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a BBC last week. He argued that advances in artificial intelligence will solve the riddle of nuclear fusion within five years, and that fusion power could be feeding electricity into grids around the world within 8 to 15 years. The process, which fuses atoms together to release vast amounts of energy, has long been described as a nearly limitless source of carbon-free power. Wright framed it as a near-term solution to the climate challenge.

But scientists strongly disagree. While recent experiments have inched closer to proving fusion’s potential, most researchers maintain that commercial plants remain decades away. And even if a breakthrough arrived tomorrow, fusion would not be a near-term fix for climate change: building, permitting, and connecting plants to the grid would take years, while emissions cuts are needed this decade.

Experts warn that portraying fusion as imminent risks downplaying the need to expand proven technologies like wind, solar, and storage to cut emissions now.

Wright’s remarks, delivered in Brussels ahead of President Trump’s state visit to the U.K., marked one of the boldest timelines yet. “With artificial intelligence and what’s going on at the national labs and private companies in the United States, we will have that approach about how to harness fusion energy multiple ways within the next five years,” he said. “The technology, it’ll be on the electric grid, you know, in eight to 15 years.”

Fusion is alluring but notoriously difficult to achieve: replicating the conditions of the sun requires heating atoms to temperatures many times hotter than its core and keeping them contained long enough to release usable energy. That technical challenge has eluded scientists for decades despite billions of dollars in public and private investment.

AI has accelerated research, helping model plasma behavior and materials at speeds previously impossible. But leading labs and international projects — from ITER in France to U.S. national facilities — say deployment at commercial scale is still a mid-century goal at best. The International Energy Agency describes fusion as a “longer-term option” for clean power, and MIT’s Plasma Science & Fusion Center notes that while progress is steady, the scientific and engineering challenges remain formidable.

In short: talk of fusion on the grid by the 2030s is far outside mainstream expectations.

Wright also used the BBC interview to defend cuts to renewable subsidies, urge the U.K. to lift its ban on fracking, and warn against Europe’s reliance on Chinese clean energy technology. The framing aligns with the Trump administration’s energy posture: skeptical of mainstream climate science, supportive of fossil fuel expansion, and resistant to long-term subsidies for renewables.

The Bottom Line

Fusion could someday change the world’s energy mix, but it cannot replace the urgent need for action now. The International Energy Agency warns that global emissions must fall nearly 50% by 2030 to keep climate goals within reach. Betting on a future breakthrough risks slowing investment in technologies already cutting costs and carbon — wind, solar, storage, and transmission — which are critical to grid reliability and today’s consumer bills.

For everyday consumers, Wright’s prediction invites optimism, but with caution: fusion remains a distant prospect, not a present solution. It is still a research project measured in decades, not something that can ease near-term climate or cost pressures. The decisions that shape your monthly utility bill — and the speed of America’s transition to cleaner, more affordable energy — depend on proven technologies being deployed today, not speculative breakthroughs promised tomorrow.

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