Chris Wright is Poised to Be the Next Secretary of Energy Under the Trump Administration: Here’s What That Means for the Future of Climate Action
By: Meg Slattery, PhD, Staff Scientist
Photo: Gage Skidmore / CC BY-SA 2.0
If you watched President Trump’s Energy Secretary nominee Chris Wright’s confirmation hearing, you might have been pleasantly surprised to hear several reasonable statements on climate change. In the typical back-and-forth with Senators, he repeatedly reaffirmed his belief in climate change with statements like “energy and climate is a global problem” and “it’s a real issue.”
But let’s be clear: For the person overseeing our nation’s energy infrastructure and making critical decisions that will set the course of energy policy for decades, it’s not enough to articulate a belief in climate change. We need someone who recognizes its urgency and is dedicated to marshalling the government’s resources to address it.
Our Senators charged with deciding Wright’s fate need to look beyond platitudes and examine his position and its policy implications more closely.
Climate Change and Natural Disasters
Wright doesn’t deny the basic science behind climate change. What he denies is the climate crisis. In Bettering Human Lives, a report published by Liberty Energy (the company Wright founded in 2011), Wright claims that climate change is not linked to increases in the frequency or intensity of natural disasters and that even if it were, our resources would be better spent addressing more pressing global issues, such as gender inequality, nutrition, and “trade.”
Wright and his team at Liberty Energy repeatedly claim that there has been “no observed increase in the key extreme weather events: hurricanes, tornadoes, and weather-related drought.” In reality, there is an overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change exacerbates natural disasters and will continue to do so in the future, despite the complex dynamics that exist between disasters, land use, and vulnerability.
Let’s look at the data.
A study that analyzed satellite imagery to homogenize data from 1979-2017 found that, indeed, tropical cyclone intensity has increased, with the proportion of storms likely to reach a category 3 or higher growing at 8 percent per decade. Furthermore, the data also shows increased precipitation associated with tropical cyclones, particularly in the North Atlantic Basin, which leads to significant flooding damages. The Sixth IPCC report (which Wright himself cites as a reputable source) stated with high confidence that “anthropogenic climate change has contributed to extreme precipitation associated with recent intense hurricanes, such as Harvey in 2017.” Looking forward, “climate change is projected to magnify the impact of tropical cyclones in [North America] by increasing rainfall and extreme wind speed.”
During the confirmation hearing, Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) was the only member to address Wright’s stance on climate and natural disasters, which he brought up in the context of the horrific wildfires that have devastated Los Angeles throughout January. As Padilla noted, these fires were able to reach such an unprecedented destructive scale due to unseasonably dry vegetation and abnormally high windspeeds, both of which are “a direct result of climate change.”
Nonetheless, Wright stood by previous social media posts dismissing concern about wildfires as “hype to justify more impoverishment from bad government policies.” The post in question dismissed concern about climate change using similar logic as Bettering Human Lives, i.e., pointing to data about a metric that has not changed significantly on a global scale (in this case, the incidence of wildfires) while ignoring regionally specific impacts that exacerbate natural disasters, such as higher wind speeds and drought—both of which are established and observed in the Southwest United States.
The more pressing issue is what climate science tells us will happen if we overshoot 1.5 °C of global warming, particularly if global warming levels increase by 3° or 4 °C, which is the trajectory we are likely to put ourselves on if we embrace a fossil fuels-driven agenda that reverses current mitigation trends (SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5 in the figure below). With high confidence, the IPCC predicts that overshooting 1.5 °C will lead to concurrent climate hazards, including simultaneous crop failure that would risk the global food supply. At a temperature increase of 4 °C, 4 billion people are projected to experience water scarcity.
Above: Global and regional risks for increasing levels of global warming. From Figure TS.4, IPCC AR6 Working Group II Report.
Importantly, those most vulnerable to climate change impacts are the very people Wright is purporting to help via fossil fuels. Climate change, particularly above 2 °C, is expected to undermine the possibility of achieving nearly all sustainable development goals through ecosystem stress, food and water insecurity, and increased conflict and disease. Meanwhile, climate action—if implemented in a way that prioritizes community well-being—reinforces sustainable development goals through improved resource management, reduced pollution, and mechanisms for North-to-South and South-to-South collaboration.
Senator John Hickenlooper (D-CO) also expressed his concern about climate change acceleration and unlocking feedback loops during the confirmation hearing, asking whether Wright believed the Department of Energy (DOE) should have contingency plans if climate change is faster than anticipated. Wright stated that “climate change is a global issue…and the solution to that issue is to evolve our energy system.” He pointed to his previous experience with nuclear, solar, geothermal, and new battery technology, said he wished we could make faster progress, and furthermore, stated that the way we can continue to do that is via investments through DOE to “accelerate the development of new technologies.” He said President Trump is firmly aligned on that as well, to which Senator Hickenlooper replied, “great.”
And it does sound great, until you consider actions the Trump administration is already taking to dismantle the progress the US has made in addressing climate change. These include withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord, revoking twelve executive orders under Biden that sought to establish US climate leadership and uphold scientific integrity, and pausing permits and loans for wind energy.
Benefits of Hydrocarbons and Challenges with Renewables
The other central premise of Wright’s argument is that the cost of climate change is outweighed by the benefits of hydrocarbons and the role of energy in economic development. It is true that fossil fuels are highly energy-dense, which historically has enabled developments in food production, medicine, and transportation. It’s also true that the energy transition isn’t going to be easy, but it’s not nearly as costly as locking ourselves into irreversible climate change.
The challenges of replacing fossil fuels are well known to the scientific community, policymakers, and climate advocates. Efforts have been underway to address them for years, many of which were supported by DOE under mandates from Congress in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). The federal government can—and should—play an active role in helping solve these challenges.
Let’s look at decarbonizing the industrial sector, which is one of the most challenging aspects of climate change mitigation. During the Biden Administration, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm created an Industrial Decarbonization Roadmap, a report that identified subsector-specific strategies for manufacturing iron and steel, cement, food and beverage, and chemicals, as well as petroleum refining, along with ten different offices within DOE that supported the development of industrial decarbonization technologies. This strategy led DOE’s Office of Energy Demonstrations to invest $6.3 billion to fund industrial decarbonization demonstration projects, which, combined with other clean energy investments and tax credits in the IRA, represented a monumental step forward.
The federal government can also help lead the way in addressing some of the challenges associated with intermittent renewable energy by investing in solutions like interregional transmission, energy storage, and demand-side management. For example, interregional transmission enables energy to be transferred across geographic regions, strengthening resilience to natural disasters and enabling areas rich in low-cost renewable resources to export that electricity to where it’s needed. Building more interregional transmission also lowers system costs, benefiting consumers—and that’s not according to climate activists; that’s according to General Electric. As part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), DOE’s Grid Deployment Office administered a $10.5 billion Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships program to invest in grid resilience and expand transmission.
These investments are having a real impact on consumers, with research and development already driving down the prices of wind, solar, and batteries. Government policies like the IRA also played a “pivotal role” in the recovery of US manufacturing, according to Manufacturing Today, with clean energy jobs growing at twice the rate of the overall economy, accounting for 149,000 new jobs in 2023. Opponents of renewables neglect to mention these benefits. Instead, Bettering Human Lives repeatedly claims that renewables are responsible for higher electricity prices without pointing to evidence.
Figure SPM.3 from IPCC AR6 Working Group III Report: Unit cost reductions and use in some rapidly changing mitigation technologies.
It’s imperfect, and there are challenges within challenges. The how certainly matters in terms of community participation and how new infrastructure is built, and research only goes so far. However, the solution is to keep trying to make it better, not give up, and defer to the status quo.
Wright: “There’s no such thing as clean or dirty energy”
Wright states in his YouTube video and reports that “all energy has tradeoffs.” This is true, and it’s a reality we should face head-on. There are real concerns about clean energy technologies and sustainability; new mines that impact local communities, solar and wind land use, and others that we can—and must—address.
But again, the solution is to build a future that puts communities first by mitigating those damages and maximizing local benefits, not to abandon the effort. It is fair to be concerned about solar and land use, so let’s get creative and invest in renewable energy developments that enable multipurpose land use, such as agrivoltaics—solar arrays that are collocated with agricultural land, which have been shown to improve food production and drought resilience—or using that land to provide pollinator habitat. And if we are serious about building least-harm energy supply chains, our representatives should promote responsible mining laws that protect communities and maximize critical minerals recycling by incentivizing a circular economy.
What does DOE have to do with it?
DOE’s mission is “to ensure America’s security and prosperity by addressing its energy, environmental, and nuclear challenges through transformative science and technology solutions.” On the energy side, this is primarily achieved through targeted investment in science, research and development, and demonstration projects for energy technologies.
The Biden Administration took this mission to heart. Since the BIL and IRA were signed into law, DOE invested over $100 billion into our energy system, including $28 billion for battery manufacturing, $10 billion for the electric grid, and $430 million to Accelerate Domestic Clean Energy Manufacturing in Former Coal Communities. DOE, like other agencies, was tasked by the Biden Administration to implement the Justice40 initiative, so these investments prioritized projects that benefited disadvantaged communities by bringing down energy costs, reducing pollution exposure, and creating skilled jobs, among other benefits.
Congress must hold leaders of the Department of Energy accountable to upholding the integrity of the agency and continuing to implement programs that benefit American communities. Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) demonstrated this type of leadership when she asked directly if Wright would continue to allocate funding for grid improvements as authorized by Congress, as DOE had previously provided $95 million to Hawaii’s electric utility to support rebuilding efforts after the Lahaina wildfires in 2023. Wright stated he would uphold the rule of law and prioritize grid improvements. Congress must make sure he keeps his word.
DOE’s clean energy investments are authorized by Congress to respond to some of the most pressing challenges facing our energy system. Decisions regarding these investments were based on the best available science combined with stakeholder feedback, and we should not walk away from them. We need a Secretary of Energy who honors these commitments, understands the urgency of the climate crisis, and believes in the government’s ability to tackle our most urgent energy issues. If Chris Wright is to lead the Energy Department, it is up to Congress to hold him accountable now, and well beyond this vote if he is confirmed.
