Donald Trump has selected another stalwart of the fossil fuel industry to lead the Department of Energy. On Saturday, the president-elect put forward Chris Wright, CEO of the oilfield services firm Liberty Energy and a major Republican donor, for the job.
Wright “has worked in Nuclear, Solar, Geothermal and Oil and Gas. Most significantly, Chris was one of the pioneers who helped launch the American Shale Revolution that fueled American Energy Independence, and transformed the Global Energy Market and Geopolitics,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Saturday. In a post on X, Wright said that he was “honored and grateful” for the opportunity.
Wright had been endorsed by several figures from the fossil fuel industry in the days leading up to Trump’s official announcement,including Oklahoma oil and gas billionaire Harold Hamm, a major Trump donor and informal advisor.
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.”
“Carbon dioxide does indeed absorb infrared radiation, contributing to warming,” Wright said. “But calling carbon dioxide ‘pollution’ is like calling out water and oxygen, the other two irreplaceable molecules for life on earth.”
For Republican administrations, the Department of the Interior is considered to be the plum job for energy policy, as the office controls leasing of public lands for energy exploration and extraction. Last week, Trump nominated North Dakota governor Doug Burgum to lead that department, as well as head the new White House Council of National Energy, which “will consist of all Departments and Agencies involved in the permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation, transportation, of ALL forms of American Energy,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Wright will also be a member of the Council, Trump said.
“This team will drive U.S. Energy Dominance, which will drive down Inflation, win the A.I. arms race with China (and others), and expand American Diplomatic Power to end Wars all across the World,” Trump wrote.
To the extent an energy policy can be inferred from Trump’s post, it’s likely to be a version of “all of the above,” with barriers lifted for fossil fuel production, along with (perhaps) some support for certain forms of renewable or non-carbon-emitting energy, or at least regulatory relief.
Geothermal, for instance, has long had bipartisan support in Congress, and could be a relative winner among non-carbon-emitting power sources under a Republican trifecta. The industry draws on technology and people from the oil and gas sector, and the location of high-quality geothermal resources in western states controlled by Republicans gives lawmakers reason to support the growing industry. Liberty Energy is also an investor in Fervo Energy, one of the leading enhanced geothermal startups.
“I cannot imagine a nominee with more technical and commercial understanding of EGS and the need to deploy geothermal for clean, firm power. Congrats, @ChrisAWright, looking forward to working with your team,” Ben Serrurier, the head of government affairs and policy at Fervo, wrote on X.
But fossils will no doubt come first. One of Wright’s first priorities will likely be to unblock the federal permitting process for new liquefied natural gas export terminals. The Biden administration formally paused approvals of new LNG export facilities earlier this year to study the effect of such exports on global greenhouse gas emissions. The move set off a cascade of recriminations and opprobrium that culminated in the pause being overturned in court.
Granholm told reporters at the annual United Nations climate conference on Friday that the department’s research on the impacts of LNG exports should be released by the end of the year, which “could set the stage for the fossil fuel-friendly Trump administration’s LNG policy being hamstrung by a Biden-era report,” Bloomberg reported. A group of Republican members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce released a letter to Granholm on Friday saying that they were “particularly troubled” by this notion.
Wright may also end up tangling with environmental activists over energy efficiency, as did Perry’s successor and Granholm’s predecessor Dan Brouillette. Climate groups sued Brouillette for not updating standards as set out by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act. Trump has long mocked such efficiency standards, especially those for water efficiency.
Wright quickly won plaudits from conservative environmental and energy groups, however. “From nuclear to solar to geothermal to oil & gas, Chris Wright has been a pioneer of American energy,” Christopher Barnard, the president of the American Conservation Coalition, wrote on X. “Chris Wright + Doug Burgum is literally the dream team.”
Notably, there’s no specific mention of coal in the Wright announcement, other than a reference to “ALL forms of American Energy.” During his tenure as Secretary of Energy, Perry proposed to help reverse the mass shutdown of coal plants that had begun during the Obama administration and continued throughout the Trump years, but his plan was in turn shut down by the Republican-majority Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Also notably absent from the announcement was any mention of Trump’s least favorite form of renewable energy: wind.
