What to know about Trump’s energy secretary nominee Chris Wright

President-elect Donald Trump announced Saturday that he has nominated Chris Wright, an executive of a fracking company who has fiercely criticized the existence of a climate crisis and the transition to renewable energy sources, to run the Department of Energy.

“As Secretary of Energy, Chris 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 Truth Social post.

The Senate must approve Wright before he can assume his role.

He has had a long history in the energy industry and has been outspoken about fracking.

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.

Outspoken critic of policies aimed at curbing climate change

Wright has made several public comments chastising efforts to fight climate change with unproven claims.

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

“The only thing resembling a crisis with respect to climate change is the regressive opportunity squelching policies justified in the name of climate change,” he added.

A 2021 study published in the environmental journal Environmental Research Letters, found that 99% of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change.

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.

However, the Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy says clean energy, like solar and wind, create little or no carbon emissions, the greenhouse gases responsible for human-amplified global warming.

While Wright does not dispute the existence of climate change, he has argued that policies aimed at reducing the impact of climate change are misguided and alarmist, describing the terms climate crisis, energy transition, carbon pollution, clean energy and dirty energy as “destructive deceptions” and “nonsense.”

Wright claims that any negative impacts of climate change are “clearly overwhelmed by the benefits of increasing energy consumption” and believes that extreme weather events like hurricanes, tornadoes and floods have not increased because of climate change.

His claims are contrary to the real-world data and research on these natural disasters.

“It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land,” a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said.

The U.S. Fifth National Climate Assessment found that human-amplified climate change is causing extreme rainfall events and extreme heat events to become more frequent and more intense.

‘All in on energy’

In his LinkedIn profile, Wright says he is “all in on energy” – including oil, natural gas, nuclear, solar, and geothermal sources – though he’s sharply critical of solar or wind energy advocates who suggest those sources are better for the environment, citing the amount of energy for wind or solar farm construction.

“It would be hard to call wind or solar clean or low environmental impact with a straight face,” Wright said last year.

The World Resources Institute has said that “renewables generate more energy than is used in their production and produce fewer emissions than other power sources over their lifetime.”

Wright also led a charge against some of the Biden administration’s climate policies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission’s rule requiring companies to disclose climate-related risks. Liberty Energy successfully convinced a federal appeals court to pause the rule shortly after it was finalized earlier this year.

Wright has frequently donated to Republican candidates and political action committees, including donating $228,390 to Trump’s joint fundraising committee earlier this summer. Last year, Wright’s total compensation as the CEO of Liberty Energy was $5.6 million, according to a recent SEC filing.

Wright suggested in an interview on Bloomberg TV in July that the Trump administration would expand drilling on federal lands and make it easier to permit infrastructure like pipelines. Asked about how the Biden administration has overseen record oil production, Wright insisted that the United States needs to do more for oil and gas production.

In 2023, during the Biden administration, the United States broke a record for domestic oil production. The U.S. produced more crude oil than any other country in history — an average of 12.9 million barrels per day, according to the U.S, Energy Information Administration .

Wright has vowed to decrease energy costs for the U.S., aligning with a promise Trump frequently made on the campaign trail.

“I make this pledge to the great people of America, I will end the devastating inflation crisis immediately, bring down interest rates and lower the cost of energy,” Trump told the Republican National Convention. “We will drill, baby, drill.”