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President-elect Donald Trump tapped a fossil fuel and nuclear energy enthusiast to lead the Department of Energy.
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The US Department of Energy headquarters building on February 9th, 2024, in Washington, DC.
Photo by J. David Ake / Getty Images
President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Energy is fossil fuel executive Chris Wright — who has misleadingly claimed on LinkedIn that “there is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either.”
Hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, and other disasters exacerbated by climate change are already hitting the US. And renewable energy capacity is on course to more than double globally by the end of the decade.
Nevertheless, Wright is a staunch evangelist for fossil fuels who consistently rejects mainstream climate science. While Wright also has ties to the nuclear energy industry, clean energy advocates say that with Trump’s cabinet picks, the US is losing ground in the race to deploy renewable energy and fight climate change. Oil and gas companies, meanwhile, are patting themselves on the back.
“Picking someone like Chris Wright is a clear sign that Trump wants to turn the U.S. into a pariah petrostate,” said Jean Su, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s energy justice program, in an emailed statement.
Wright is the CEO of Liberty Energy, a major oil and gas service provider that launched during America’s fracking boom more than a decade ago. Around 10 percent of total US primary energy production comes from wells fracked by Liberty, according to the company.
In a video posted by the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation last year, Wright refers to “irrationally restrictive policies against the production of oil and natural gas” that “do nothing to change the demand for oil and natural gas,” he claims. “Our business today is the most profitable it’s ever been. As I say, I’m one of those people needlessly enriched by [the] bad energy policy environment we live in today. I don’t celebrate that. In fact, I adamantly oppose it.”
Trump campaigned on a Republican platform that says simply, “We will DRILL, BABY, DRILL.” Wright will “be a key leader, driving innovation [and] cutting red tape,” Trump said on Truth Social announcing the appointment, which still needs to be confirmed by the Senate, over the weekend. He also said Wright would join a new “Council of National Energy” tasked with “focusing on INNOVATION over longstanding, but totally unnecessary, regulation.”
A biography of Wright included with Trump’s statement says the prospective Secretary of Energy is a “self-described tech nerd turned entrepreneur” who “embraces all energy sources if they are abundant, affordable, and reliable” and has worked in the fossil fuel, nuclear, solar, and geothermal industries. Liberty has invested in the geothermal energy startup Fervo Energy, which is working with Google to provide electricity for data centers in Nevada.
Wright’s appointment could also be a boon for nuclear energy. He sits on the board of Oklo, a company developing advanced nuclear reactors, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Tech companies have signed a slew of nuclear energy deals this year to try to satiate growing electricity demand from AI data centers. Trump’s Agenda 47 says he’ll “support nuclear energy production… by modernizing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, working to keep existing power plants open, and investing in innovative small modular reactors.” On a related note, Trump’s pick to lead deregulatory efforts at the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, said he wants to “make America the AI capital of the world.”
The fossil fuel industry is still home base for Wright, however. “Chris Wright has a special connection as a fellow MIT alum and vocal promoter of the oil and natural gas industry,” Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance that is made up of oil and gas companies, said in an emailed statement.
Wright’s sales pitch for methane, marketed by the industry as natural gas, is typically that it’s an affordable source of energy. “My dedication to bettering human lives remains steadfast, with a focus on making American energy more affordable, reliable, and secure,” Wright said in a post on X.
But tumbling prices for renewable energy infrastructure have made onshore wind and solar farms cheaper sources of electricity than fossil fuels in most of the world. “If we turn our back on the cheapest forms of new energy – like solar and wind power – it will make energy more expensive for American consumers,” Environmental Defense Fund executive director Amanda Leland said in a statement. “Any nominee, including Chris Wright, who ignores the stakes in this global clean energy race – or fails to recognize the urgent challenge of climate change – should concern all of us.”