Trump has nominated Chris Wright, a wealthy fracking pioneer and oil and gas evangelist with no government experience, as U.S. Secretary of Energy and head of the Department of Energy (DOE). The DOE oversees America’s energy policy and production, as well as the research and development of civilian nuclear power and the military’s nuclear weapons and power programs.

Wright has called for “energy sobriety,” saying, “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either,” in a LinkedIn video posted last year. 

Fact check: Human activities have “unequivocally” raised global temperatures at least 1.1 degrees Celsius since the mid-19th century, concluded the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its 2023 synthesis of climate science. That “no climate crisis” claim flies in the face of the findings of actual climate scientists.  

Wright has questioned whether climate change is causing extreme weather events, saying, “We have seen no increase in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornados, droughts or floods. Despite endless fear mongering from the media, politicians, and activists.”

Fact check: According to a new report from the IPCC, it’s an “established fact” that human-caused emissions of greenhouse gasses “have led to an increased frequency and/or intensity of some weather and climate extremes.”

Solar power, wind power, energy storage and EVs have made some small inroads in the U.S., but the incoming Energy Secretary, an oil baron backed by fossil fuel interests, does not appear intent on supporting these technologies with DOE funds. Wright has expressed concern about the embedded carbon in solar and wind turbine construction and the human rights violations in imported solar, wind, and battery materials as well as land use. 

Fact check: Wind, solar, and battery companies are moving towards recycling and circular economies. American solar module manufacturer First Solar is optimizing energy payback time — the time it takes for a solar panel to generate the same amount of energy used to produce it. There are laws against importing solar products and goods produced by forced labor currently in effect. Fossil fuels are much more energy-dense and do use significantly less acreage than renewable sources. 

Wright is preparing for his new role as energy leader by policing our language; He wants us to just say no to using these five terms: climate crisis, energy transition, carbon pollution, clean energy and dirty energy because they are “destructive deceptions” and they’re causing “huge anxiety in kids.” He said, “These terms are nonsense.” 

The Biden administration’s climate goals, with the DOE serving as a major funding conduit for billions in grants and loans, have been unprecedented in scope and scale — attempting to decarbonize the U.S. economy, onshore clean energy production, and achieve carbon-free electricity by 2035. Many Republican districts are benefitting from this industrial policy. 

The incoming President and Cabinet seem intent on burning that down.  

Fracking CEO

Wright has the unusual qualification of actually having worked in the energy industry, not a trait shared by any of the politicians, scientists or bureaucrats who have led the DOE. 

The MIT-educated engineer is CEO and founder of fracking giant Liberty Energy and the tip of the ideological spear of the Trump administration’s mission to reverse America’s climate progress, declassify CO2 as a pollutant, and unshackle the oil and gas industry from its “coastal” and “academic” induced constraints. Liberty’s customers are the large onshore oil and fossil gas production and exploration firms.

Jigar Shah, the-soon-to-be ex-head of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) loans program office applied the most compassionate interpretation to the selection of Wright, when he called him “an all of the above guy including #nuclear, #solar, #geothermal.” on social media. 

Applying a less compassionate interpretation to Wright’s online musings would categorize him as an oil and gas industry sycophant and climate change denialist. Although he might offer some hope to the nuclear and geothermal industries, (he serves on the board of microreactor aspirant Oklo and is partnered with advanced geothermal startup Fervo), the appointment is an absolute disaster for the current DOE’s industrial decarbonization, electric vehicle, energy storage, battery materials, and wind programs.

Wright is not hiding his intentions, He’s published numerous manifestos and opined on social media and podcasts about the glory of shale gas, the societal gift of fossil fuels, and the flaws of renewable energy sources.   

Fracking magnate Wright wants to “reverse” the “damage” inflicted by the current administration. Presumably, that damage includes the more than 250,000 cleantech and manufacturing jobs catalyzed by Biden’s climate laws. 

Politico reports that Wright’s candidacy for the DOE post has been pushed by Harold Hamm, a Trump advisor who made billions in North Dakota’s Bakken Shale, while E&E reports that Texas oilman and Trump supporter Tim Dunn is spending more than $100 million to back organizations such as Heartland Institute, Turning Points USA, the Cato Institute, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute in order to reverse efforts to confront global warming. 

Dunn and a web of fossil-fuel interests are also intent on the removal of the endangerment finding, a 15 year old Obama-era EPA decision determining that greenhouse gasses such as CO2 are harmful to human health, a finding backed by overwhelming legitimate scientific evidence. 

Despite Wright’s brilliance, energy experience, and education, he resorts to cherry picking in his arguments, combining facts with falsehoods, along with trite revelations such as “Humans and all complex life on Earth, is simply impossible without carbon dioxide,” that are typical of climate change denialists and oil and gas apologists. 

The nominee begrudgingly acknowledges that “the globe is slowly warming and sea levels are gradually rising, and have been for about 150 years” but also double-talks about the positive aspects of fossil fuels on life expectancy and health outweighing any negative impacts.  

Wright argues that physics will trump policy every time; Here’s a chart featuring physics from the IPCC showing that every additional ton of CO2 pumped into the air will raise the globe’s temperature. 

“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. “He’s damning frontline communities and our planet to climate hell just to pad the already bloated pockets of fossil fuel tycoons. The rest of the world will be horrified by these efforts to actually speed up climate change.”

The new Energy secretary will also serve on the soon-to-be-formed Council of National Energy, which will cut reputedly unnecessary regulation in the energy industry, and will be led by Doug Burgum, Trump’s selection for Interior Secretary and current governor of North Dakota.

Wright’s nomination will require confirmation from the 2025 Republican-majority Senate.