President-elect Donald Trump introduced Saturday that he has nominated Chris Wright, an government of a fracking firm who has fiercely criticized the existence of a local weather disaster and the transition to renewable vitality sources, to run the Division of Power.
“As Secretary of Power, Chris will probably be a key chief, driving innovation, reducing crimson tape, and ushering in a brand new ‘Golden Age of American Prosperity and World Peace,'” Trump stated in a Reality Social publish.
On this Jan. 12, 2018, file picture, Liberty Oilfield Providers Inc. CEO Chris Wright rings a ceremonial bell to have a good time the businesses IPO on the ground of the New York Inventory Change shortly after the opening bell in New York.
Lucas Jackson/Reuters, FILE
The Senate should approve Wright earlier than he can assume his position.
He has had a protracted historical past within the vitality trade and has been outspoken about fracking.
After incomes a bachelor’s diploma in mechanical engineering and a grasp’s diploma in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Know-how within the 80s, Wright labored for a number of vitality firms, lots of which targeted on gasoline manufacturing, in accordance with his LinkedIn web page.
Wright, who has by no means labored in a authorities place, based the publicly traded oilfield providers agency Liberty Power in 2010, which fracks 20% of the onshore wells nationally. The $3 billion firm is concerned in practically 10% of the USA’ complete vitality manufacturing, in accordance with Wright.
Outspoken critic of insurance policies geared toward curbing local weather change
Wright has made a number of public feedback chastising efforts to combat local weather change with unproven claims.
“There is no such thing as a local weather disaster, and we’re not within the midst of an vitality transition both,” Wright stated in a video posted to LinkedIn final yr.
On this Jan. 17, 2018, file picture, Liberty Oilfield Providers CEO Chris Wright is proven in Denver.
Andy Cross/Denver Publish through Getty Photos, FILE
“The one factor resembling a disaster with respect to local weather change is the regressive alternative squelching insurance policies justified within the identify of local weather change,” he added.
A 2021 examine revealed within the environmental journal Environmental Analysis Letters, discovered that 99% of local weather scientists agree that people are inflicting world warming and local weather change.
Wright is an outspoken critic of insurance policies geared toward curbing local weather change, together with the Division of Power’s aim to succeed in net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
“There is no such thing as a such factor as clear vitality or soiled vitality,” Wright stated final yr.
Nonetheless, the Workplace of Power Effectivity & Renewable Power says clear vitality, like photo voltaic and wind, create little or no carbon emissions, the greenhouse gases answerable for human-amplified world warming.
Whereas Wright doesn’t dispute the existence of local weather change, he has argued that insurance policies geared toward lowering the impression of local weather change are misguided and alarmist, describing the phrases local weather disaster, vitality transition, carbon air pollution, clear vitality and soiled vitality as “harmful deceptions” and “nonsense.”
Wright claims that any unfavourable impacts of local weather change are “clearly overwhelmed by the advantages of accelerating vitality consumption” and believes that excessive climate occasions like hurricanes, tornadoes and floods haven’t elevated due to local weather change.
His claims are opposite to the real-world information and analysis on these pure disasters.
“It’s unequivocal that human affect has warmed the environment, ocean and land,” a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change (IPCC) stated.
The U.S. Fifth Nationwide Local weather Evaluation discovered that human-amplified local weather change is inflicting excessive rainfall occasions and excessive warmth occasions to turn into extra frequent and extra intense.
‘All in on vitality’
In his LinkedIn profile, Wright says he’s “all in on vitality” – together with oil, pure gasoline, nuclear, photo voltaic, and geothermal sources – although he is sharply vital of photo voltaic or wind vitality advocates who counsel these sources are higher for the setting, citing the quantity of vitality for wind or photo voltaic farm development.
“It could be exhausting to name wind or photo voltaic clear or low environmental impression with a straight face,” Wright stated final yr.
The World Assets Institute has stated that “renewables generate extra vitality than is used of their manufacturing and produce fewer emissions than different energy sources over their lifetime.”
Wright additionally led a cost towards among the Biden administration’s local weather insurance policies, together with the Securities and Change Fee’s rule requiring firms to reveal climate-related dangers. Liberty Power efficiently satisfied a federal appeals court docket to pause the rule shortly after it was finalized earlier this yr.
Wright has incessantly donated to Republican candidates and political motion committees, together with donating $228,390 to Trump’s joint fundraising committee earlier this summer time. Final yr, Wright’s complete compensation because the CEO of Liberty Power was $5.6 million, in accordance with a latest SEC submitting.
Wright prompt in an interview on Bloomberg TV in July that the Trump administration would develop drilling on federal lands and make it simpler to allow infrastructure like pipelines. Requested about how the Biden administration has overseen document oil manufacturing, Wright insisted that the USA must do extra for oil and gasoline manufacturing.
In 2023, throughout the Biden administration, the USA broke a document for home oil manufacturing. The U.S. produced extra crude oil than another nation in historical past — a mean of 12.9 million barrels per day, in accordance with the U.S, Power Info Administration .
Wright has vowed to lower vitality prices for the U.S., aligning with a promise Trump incessantly made on the marketing campaign path.
On this Jan. 12, 2018, file picture, Liberty Oilfield Providers Inc. CEO Chris Wright laughs as he celebrates the businesses IPO on the ground of the New York Inventory Change shortly after the opening bell in New York.
Lucas Jackson/Reuters, FILE
“I make this pledge to the good individuals of America, I’ll finish the devastating inflation disaster instantly, deliver down rates of interest and decrease the price of vitality,” Trump instructed the Republican Nationwide Conference. “We are going to drill, child, drill.”
