President-elect Donald Trump announced Saturday that he has nominated Chris Wright, a fracking executive who has been a vocal critic of the climate crisis and the transition to renewable energy sources, to lead 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.

In this Jan. 12, 2018, file photo, Liberty Oilfield Services Inc. CEO Chris Wright rings a ceremonial bell to celebrate the companies’ IPOs on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, shortly after the opening bell in New York.
Lucas Jackson/Reuters, FILE
Wright must be approved by the Senate before he can take office.
He has a long history in the energy industry and has spoken out 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 1980s, Wright worked at various energy companies, many of them focused on gas production, according to his LinkedIn page.
Wright, who has never held a government position, in 2010 founded the public oil field utility company Liberty Energy, which fracks 20% of onshore wells nationwide. The $3 billion company accounts for nearly 10 percent of total energy production in the United States, according to Wright.
A sharp critique of policies aimed at reducing climate change
Wright has made several public comments with unsubstantiated claims chastising efforts to combat climate change.
“There is no climate crisis, and we are not even in the middle of an energy transition,” Wright said. the video posted on LinkedIn last year.

In this Jan. 17, 2018, file photo, Liberty Oilfield Services CEO Chris Wright is pictured in Denver.
Andy Cross/Denver Post via Getty Images, FILE
“The only thing that looks like a crisis when it comes to climate change is the regressive option destruction 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 they agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change.
Wright is a vocal critic of policies aimed at reducing climate change, including the Energy Department’s goal of zero carbon emissions by 2050.
“There is no such thing as clean energy or dirty energy,” Wright said last year.
However, Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy says that clean energies, like solar and wind, produce little or no carbon emissions, the greenhouse gases that humans are responsible for global warming.
While Wright does not dispute the existence of climate change, he has argued that climate change mitigation policies are misguided and alarmist, describing the climate crisis, energy transition, carbon pollution, clean energy and dirty energy as “destructive frauds”. “and “nonsense”.
Wright says the negative impacts of climate change “clearly outweigh the benefits of increased energy consumption” and believes that extreme weather events such as hurricanes, tornadoes and floods have not increased as a result of climate change.
His claims run counter to real-world data and research on these natural disasters.
“There is no doubt that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, the ocean and the earth,” he reported Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) he said
The Fifth US National Climate Assessment that human-amplified climate change is making extreme rainfall events and extreme heat events more frequent and intense.
‘Energy all over’
On his LinkedIn profile, Wright says he’s “all about energy” (including oil, natural gas, nuclear, solar and geothermal sources), though he’s highly critical of solar or wind advocates who suggest those sources are better for the environment. citing the amount of energy for the construction of wind or solar parks.
“It would be hard to call wind or solar clean or low environmental impact with a straight face,” Wright said last year.
World Resources Institute he said “renewables produce more energy than is used in their production and produce fewer emissions over their lifetime than other energy sources.”
Wright also led the charge against some of the Biden administration’s climate policies, including a Securities and Exchange Commission rule requiring companies to disclose climate-related risks. Liberty Energy successfully persuaded a federal appeals court to suspend the rule shortly after it expired 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 salary as CEO of Liberty Energy was $5.6 million, according to one. 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 such as pipelines. Asked how the Biden administration has overseen record oil production, Wright stressed that the United States needs to do more for oil and gas production.
In 2023, during the Biden administration, the United States broke the record for domestic oil production. The US produced more crude oil than any other country in history, averaging 12.9 million barrels per day. US, Energy Information Administration .
Wright has vowed to lower energy costs for the US, in line with Trump’s frequent campaign promise.

In this Jan. 12, 2018, file photo, Liberty Oilfield Services Inc. CEO Chris Wright laughs as he celebrates the company’s IPO on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shortly after the opening bell in New York.
Lucas Jackson/Reuters, FILE
“I make this commitment to the great American people, I will immediately end the devastating inflationary crisis, lower interest rates and reduce the cost of energy,” Trump said at the Republican National Convention. – We’ll dig, baby, dig.