Trump Picks Fracking Firm CEO Chris Wright to Be Energy Secretary

November 17, 2024

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by Evan Halper, Maxine Joselow, Maegan Vazquez and Josh Dawsey (Washington Post) The executive has taken a defiant approach to fighting climate change by attacking policies that call for a shift from fossil fuels. -- President-elect Donald Trump announced on Saturday that he has selected Chris Wright, the head of fracking company Liberty Energy and a skeptic of mainstream climate science, to lead the Department of Energy and to serve on a new National Energy Council.

In his announcement, Trump credited Wright as “one of the pioneers who helped launch the American Shale Revolution,” adding that “as Secretary of Energy, Chris will be a key leader, driving innovation, cutting red tape.”

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The fracking executive runs a foundation focused on dispelling the conventional wisdom on climate change and promoting expanded fossil fuel production as a solution to many of the world’s problems, an approach others say would drive dangerous levels of warming.

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Wright is an MIT graduate who developed new techniques for fracking — extracting natural gas by creating cracks in the Earth’s bedrock — that helped advance the shale gas revolution.

“There is no ‘climate crisis,’” Wright said in a video he posted on LinkedIn last year, adding that “the only thing resembling a crisis with respect to climate change is the regressive, opportunity-squelching policies justified in the name of climate change.”

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Wright’s appointment puts a strident opponent of clean-energy subsidies in a key Cabinet post as the Trump White House will be weighing whether to rescind billions of dollars in such incentives. Trump has repeatedly called for canceling the subsidies, which are helping to fund a range of climate-friendly endeavors, from consumers purchasing electric vehicles to oil companies investing in green hydrogen.

As energy secretary, Wright would be deeply involved in the allocation of such subsidies, as well as federal loan guarantees to energy projects. He would be in charge of the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal, and he would oversee the domestic nuclear energy industry when the sector is seeking to extend the lives of existing reactors and bring new reactor technologies to market.

Wright’s antipathy toward clean-energy subsidies and rules that penalize fossil fuel emissions contrasts with positions taken by (Doug) Burgum (Trump's nominee for Interior Secretary and “energy czar” to oversee Trump's new National Energy Council). As governor of North Dakota, Burgum called for the state to become carbon-neutral by 2030, though he favored reaching this goal through nascent technologies, such as those designed to capture carbon dioxide and store it deep underground.

One of the biggest projects for capturing and burying greenhouse gas emissions in North Dakota is being bankrolled by (Harold) Hamm. Such technologies, which environmentalists caution are not an adequate solution to climate change, rely heavily on federal subsidies.

Another big challenge Wright would confront at the Energy Department is the nation’s power crunch, as demand for electricity from data centers, the manufacturing boom and electric vehicle adoption strain the nation’s power grid. Large new power transmission and distribution projects are urgently needed but have been stymied by fights over who should pay for them, the emissions impacts of different types of power, and the rights of landowners who live in the path of proposed projects.

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Other oil industry executives cheered his appointment. READ MORE

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Excerpt from Politico: In 2011, he founded Liberty, a natural gas fracking service company. He also serves on the board of Oklo, a start-up Silicon Valley-based company developing a new type of small nuclear reactor. He caught Trump’s attention at a fundraiser gathering of oil industry executives in Houston in April.

Liberty and Wright are among the entities that sued the Securities and Exchange Commission over its climate disclosure rule. He testified before a House committee in April against the rule, where he argued that climate change is not within the SEC’s purview and derided the “destructive mission creep” of the agency. READ MORE

Excerpt from E&E News Energywire: Both Chris Wright and Sean Duffy — Trump’s picks for DOE and DOT, respectively — are critical of electric vehicles. Wright, who runs a fracking technology company, has called terms like clean energy “deceptive.” Duffy, a former Republican representative from Wisconsin, has disparaged EVs as unpopular with drivers and questioned the underlying causes of climate change.

If confirmed by the Senate, the two will have significant — but not absolute — authority to roll back Biden administration programs intended to foster a growing EV industry.

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The Department of Transportation sets the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, which complement the emissions standards set by EPA. Under Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, DOT wrote a five-year plan to boost fleetwide fuel economy to 50.4 miles per gallon in 2031 from 46.7 miles per gallon in 2026.

The Trump transition team has said the incoming administration plans to roll back the latest CAFE standards. That would involve a monthslong effort, including public notices, a comment period and a public hearing.

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“There won’t be a thumb on the scale to the same extent as there is now for one fuel type over another, ” said Andrew Wishnia, who was a climate adviser in Biden’s Department of Transportation for two years and helped write parts of the bipartisan infrastructure law.

Wishnia said he “could envision a Trump administration using that office to provide technical assistance to fuel types across the board.” For example, DOT’s EV-charging initiatives allow it to also fund fueling infrastructure for hydrogen, natural gas and propane.

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The result of the Trump administration’s efforts may be an auto industry that switches, at least in the short term, to building hybrids.

Hybrids are more profitable than all-electric vehicles, and allow the companies to benefit from the battery plants they’re already building, said Karl Brauer, an auto analyst with iSeeCars.

They’re also more popular with American drivers, who remain concerned about the high cost of EVs and the lack of charging stations.

Hybrids are more fuel-efficient than conventional internal-combustion vehicles. Though they’re not the zero-emissions solution that many environmentalists prefer, they may be the best way to cut pollution from the transportation sector, Brauer said.

“The best diet is not the greatest diet in the world — it’s the one you can maintain,” Brauer said. READ MORE