The News
US President-elect Donald Trump nominated oil executive Chris Wright to lead the Department of Energy, putting a climate change skeptic in charge of the government’s largest pool of clean energy resources.
Wright, CEO of the oilfield services firm Liberty Energy and a major Republican donor, said in a social media post last year that “there is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition.”
That may be disconcerting to the many companies — from tiny startups to the biggest oil majors — that have tapped billions of dollars in the energy department precisely to build out energy transition projects.
Wright will also be instrumental in carrying out Trump’s desire to expand US LNG exports, although current Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm promised at COP29 that a study on the public risks and benefits of LNG will be done by the end of the year, which could create legal obstacles for Wright.
In an interview with Semafor prior to Wright’s nomination, Granholm said her biggest concern about the future direction of the department is about attempts to strip out DEI and community-benefit provisions from the agency’s projects, even though “studies have shown that if you have community at the table, the project is more likely to succeed because you have less friction and fewer lawsuits.”