As the next presidential term approaches, the selection of key cabinet members is stirring both anticipation and concern in the climate tech industry. With Chris Wright, CEO of Liberty Oilfield Services, emerging as a top pick for Energy Secretary, the future of favorable energy policy—especially for renewable energy companies—seems uncertain. In this news roundup, we explore what Wright’s potential leadership could mean for the clean energy landscape.
Trump Picks Gas Executive as Energy Secretary – The New York Times
President-elect Donald J. Trump has tapped Chris Wright, chief executive of Liberty Energy, a fracking company based in Denver, as his choice for secretary of energy.
Mr. Wright, who calls himself “a tech nerd turned entrepreneur,” is a media-friendly evangelist for fossil fuels who promotes a feel-good message that oil and gas can lift people out of poverty, while disparaging climate science.
In a video posted on LinkedIn last year, Mr. Wright declared, “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either.”
Mr. Wright, who has no government experience, caught the attention of Mr. Trump in part through his appearances on Fox News. He also appears frequently on podcasts and social media videos, often using language and imagery associated with progressive causes to link oil and gas with issues like the fight for women’s equality.
What to know about Trump’s energy secretary nominee Chris Wright – ABC News
After earning a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 80s, Wright worked for several energy companies, many of which focused on gas production, according to his LinkedIn page.
Wright, who has never worked in a government position, founded the publicly traded oilfield services firm Liberty Energy in 2010, which fracks 20% of the onshore wells nationally. The $3 billion company is involved in nearly 10% of the United States’ total energy production, according to Wright.
[…] Wright is an outspoken critic of policies aimed at curbing climate change, including the Department of Energy’s goal to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
“There is no such thing as clean energy or dirty energy,” Wright said last year.
Trump picks oil services CEO Chris Wright to lead Energy Department, alarming climate groups – Utility Dive
Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous called Wright “utterly unqualified for the job.”
Wright “is a climate denier who has profited off of polluting our communities and endangering our health and future,” Jealous said. “So, of course Donald Trump finds him fit to lead the Department of Energy, where he’ll be hell-bent on abusing his power to prolong the use of deadly fossil fuels and give his corporate polluter executive friends a rubber stamp for the unfettered buildout of [liquefied natural gas] exports.”
With Republicans soon to be in charge of the House, Senate and the White House, experts say the Trump administration will likely try to increase gas exports.
“This will have profound impacts on domestic energy markets, as removing a public interest balanced consideration will prioritize gas exports at the expense of access to domestic supply. We’ll see sharply higher domestic natural gas prices going forward,” according to Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program.
Trump’s Energy Pick Chris Wright Brings New Views On Climate Policy – Forbes
Wright just disagrees, respectfully, with the way the US and the international community have been going about addressing climate change.
Earlier this year, Liberty Energy published the third edition of a book it calls “Bettering Human Lives.” In it, Wright lays out his philosophy on energy and climate change, and why it is vitally important for the US to produce more oil and gas, not less of it as part of efforts to mitigate climate change and lift hundreds of millions of human beings out of energy poverty. The book sums up that philosophy in these “Ten Key Takeaways:”
1. Energy is essential to life and the world needs more of it!
2. The modern world today is powered by and made of hydrocarbons.
3. Hydrocarbons are essential to improving the wealth, health, and life opportunities for the less energized seven billion people who aspire to be among the world’s lucky one billion.
4. Hydrocarbons supply more than 80% of global energy and thousands of critical materials and products.
5. The American Shale Revolution transformed energy markets, energy security, and geopolitics.
6. Global demand for oil, natural gas, and coal are all at record levels and rising – no energy transition has begun.
7. Modern alternatives, like solar and wind, provide only a part of electricity demand and do not replace the most critical uses of hydrocarbons. Energy-dense, reliable nuclear could be more impactful.
8. Making energy more expensive or unreliable compromises people, national security, and the environment.
9. Climate change is a global challenge but is far from the world’s greatest threat to human life.
10. Zero Energy Poverty by 2050 is a superior goal compared to Net Zero 2050.
What to know about Chris Wright, Trump’s choice to run the Energy Department – AP News
If confirmed, Wright will join North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Trump’s choice to be interior secretary, as a key player on energy policy in a second Trump term. Wright will be a member of a new National Energy Council that Burgum will chair. The new panel will seek to establish U.S. “energy dominance” around the world, Trump said.
The energy council will include all executive branch agencies involved in energy permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation and transportation, with a focus on “cutting red tape” and boosting domestic energy production, Trump said. The council’s mission represents a near-complete reversal from actions pursued by Democratic President Joe Biden, who has made fighting climate change a top priority.
Trump has pledged to rescind unspent funds in Biden’s 2022 climate law and is widely expected to curb or reverse Biden’s push for more electric vehicles and stricter regulation of carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants.
Where Chris Wright, Trump’s energy secretary pick, stands on climate change – Axios
The intrigue: In a Business Roundtable event two weeks before the election, Wright called oil and gas critics “nuts,” adding that “there’s no dirty energy, there’s no clean energy, there’s no good stuff, there’s no bad stuff. Everything has tradeoffs.”
- Wright downplayed the importance of renewable energy sources but sounded bullish on nuclear, saying it should go from 4% of energy production to 10%.
Between the lines: In various statements, Wright has either rejected the idea of a climate crisis or downplayed its importance, contrary to most of the scientific community.
In his annual Bettering Human Lives report, Wright acknowledges it is real but calls it merely a “challenge” and “far from the world’s greatest threat to human life.”
Trump’s Energy Department pick has history of downplaying climate change impacts – The Hill
The emissions released through the burning of fossil fuels are the primary driver of climate change. Wright has also sought to downplay other downsides of such fuels’ use. Notably, in 2019, he drank fracking fluid on camera as part of an effort to say that it’s not dangerous.
Fracking is a process that involves injecting rocks with a mix of water, sand and chemicals to extract oil and gas. Studies have linked it to water pollution, childhood cancers and earthquakes.
“The biggest challenge with energy in the world today isn’t toxic chemicals in frac fluid, it’s the fact that so many people around the world don’t have access to energy,” Chris Wright said in the 2019 video.
Trump’s Top Staff Choices Could Have Far-Reaching Consequences for the Climate – Inside Climate News
The chief mandate of the Department of Energy is to manage and protect the U.S. nuclear arsenal. But if confirmed, Wright will oversee many parts of the country’s energy production. He is expected to redirect billions of dollars in climate and clean energy-related spending from the Inflation Reduction Act, at least some of which Republicans are hoping to repeal outright. However, experts say this move could face backlash because much of the IRA spending already distributed has gone to red states, and oil and gas companies benefit from tax credits for carbon capture, biofuels and hydrogen.
One of Chris Wright’s first orders of business will likely be to eliminate President Joe Biden’s pause on new liquefied natural gas export terminals. Similar to Burgum, Wright is known to have close ties with Continental Resources’ Hamm. Both potential appointees will serve on the new National Energy Council, which Trump writes will “oversee the path to U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE by cutting red tape, enhancing private sector investments across all sectors of the Economy, and by focusing on INNOVATION over longstanding, but totally unnecessary, regulation.”
Trump nominates fracking magnate and climate change skeptic as energy secretary – Fortune
US President-elect Donald Trump nominated fracking magnate and climate change skeptic Chris Wright as energy secretary on Saturday, tasking him with “cutting red tape” which the new administration hopes will drive investment in fossil fuels.
“As Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright will be a key leader, driving innovation, cutting red tape, and ushering in a new ‘Golden Age of American Prosperity and Global Peace,’” Trump said in a statement.
Trump’s Pick for Energy Secretary Is a Big League Fracking Executive – Heatmap
Trump’s first Secretary of Energy, former Texas Governor Rick Perry, reportedly thought the Department dealt more with, well, energy than it does in reality. While under current Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm it has become a locus of climate change and green energy policy, the sprawling department oversees the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile, its national laboratories, and its energy efficiency standards, in addition to a variety of energy programs. The Biden administration has super-sized the Department’s Loan Program Office, which has gone on to offer billions in funding to renewable and non-emitting energy infrastructure projects across the country.
Granholm and the Biden White House put a distinctive stamp on the Department of Energy, letting the charter for a coal advisory group expire expire and renaming the Office of Fossil Energy to the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, reflecting the administration’s major investments in carbon capture technology and infrastructure over the past four years.
Wright, on the other hand, is a deep skeptic of the idea that there’s a climate crisis or energy transition happening at all. To wit: “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition,” Wright said in a video posted to LinkedIn last year. He also wrote that “climate crisis, energy transition, carbon pollution, clean energy, and dirty energy,” were “Five commonly used words around Energy and Climate that are both deceptive and destructive.”
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***News roundup guest post from FischTank PR interns Baylee Matthews and Kaylee Seitz***
