NEW YORK (Reuters) -The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is urging utilities across the country to keep coal-fired power plants running longer, in part to help deliver the vast amount of electricity needed to fuel artificial intelligence, Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Reuters on Thursday.

Delaying the retirement of often half-century-old coal plants is part of a broader strategy to increase the country's power output that will also include boosting nuclear energy and allowing backup power plants to operate around the clock.

The administration has made expanding energy production a top priority while rejecting concerns about climate change, which Trump told the United Nations this week amounted to a global "con job."

"We've got to speed up firm capacity and stop retirement of firm capacity," Wright said, adding the government had been in discussions with lots of utilities nationwide and expects the majority of the several dozen U.S. coal plants nearing retirement to delay closure. 

"Utilities across the country are saying, thank you," Wright said. "We don't want to close them."

Wright said the U.S. would also aim to get more out of the existing grid by operating backup generators and peaker plants, which typically ramp up temporarily to meet spiking power use, more permanently.

The White House is also seeking to boost nuclear energy, including through regulatory reforms to speed permitting and hosting new nuclear technologies through the Department of Energy.

"We need that industry as another source of energy, and so we're going to give temporary nudges to get it started," Wright said.

Currently, two shut U.S. nuclear power plants - including one on Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania - are in the unprecedented process of being restarted. Three Mile Island, dubbed the Crane Clean Energy Center, would deliver electricity for Microsoft data centers.

Total U.S. electricity demand is projected to hit record highs this year and next, according to the Energy Information Administration. Growth in the country's power consumption will also continue to accelerate through the end of the decade as new massive AI data center campuses power up. 

Wright said the U.S. will need 100 gigawatts more of firm capacity in the next five years. That would likely not include renewables like solar and wind power which do not typically run around the clock, he said. A gigawatt is enough power for about 1 million U.S. homes.

The Department of Energy, this year, also opened its own land for the development of power plants and data centers. So far, the department has received some 300 inquiries, Wright said.  

(Additional reporting by Echo WangEditing by Marguerita Choy)