President-elect Trump has nominated Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright to be US Energy Secretary, confirming the fossil fuel industry’s outsized and undue influence in shaping and implementing the Trump Administration’s agenda. Liberty is a leading producer of methane gas through fracking and according to ABC News, Wright donated almost $230,000 to the President-elect’s joint fundraising committee. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is expected to hold a hearing on Wright’s nomination tomorrow.
In videos and Congressional testimony, Wright portrays himself as a “truth teller,” while falsely claiming that climate scientists and renewable energy advocates are deceptive. These performances are textbook examples of disinformation, employing the exact tactics Mr. Wright decries.
These are dangerous deceptions for someone potentially charged with leading the Department of Energy (DOE), an agency specifically tasked with informing the nation’s energy transition. Should Mr. Wright engage in such tactics during his confirmation hearing, senators on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee must not allow him to get away with this ploy.
The motivation to engage in disinformation comes when accurate information is threatening. Here are the facts.
The human-caused, fossil fuel-driven climate crisis is here.
NASA’s Climate Evidence webpage leads with this headline: “There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate.” The Fifth National Climate Assessment is equally clear: “Human activities are changing the climate…primarily because humans have burned and continue to burn fossil fuels for transportation and energy generation.”
While Wright acknowledges the reality of climate change, he deliberately misrepresents climate data and research to downplay the seriousness of the problem and to undermine proven solutions including transitioning away from fossil fuels and accelerating the transition to clean energy. He adopts a purposefully shortsighted view when describing the impacts of burning fossil fuels on the world, focusing on profits over people.
Yes, nations need energy for economic development, but that energy can and should come from clean resources, not dirty fossil fuels. Air and water pollution from fossil fuels is a major public health challenge and catastrophic climate impacts are setting back sustainable development and anti-poverty efforts, especially in lower-income nations. The fact that fossil fuel companies have reaped enormous profits in the process is not an argument for more drilling.
Wright’s frequent focus on the relatively recent past is purposely misleading. As NASA explains, over most of the last 800,000 years, until humans started burning fossil fuels, atmospheric CO2 concentrations basically never went below 180 parts per million (ppm) and never went above 280 ppm. That 100 ppm difference, though, was the difference between glacial and interglacial periods. During glacial periods, much of the northern half of North America was covered in an ice sheet a mile thick. That .01% change in CO2 concentration is the difference between a planet humans can live on, and one we cannot.
Primarily driven by the burning of fossil fuels, the CO2 concentration has increased to more than 420 ppm. For roughly every 10 ppm increase in CO2 concentrations, we see about 0.1°C (nearly 0.2°F) of warming. In the last sixty years, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has grown 100 times faster than it did at the close of the last ice age. These are the numbers that must motivate our future energy policy, not the profits generated by the post-World War II oil boom.
Climate change is making extreme weather more intense and more frequent.
Leading independent global and US scientific assessments, including from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the National Climate Assessment, show that climate change is already having significant real-world impacts, and these will worsen as heat-trapping emissions rise. Advances in attribution science also show that climate change is contributing to worsening some types of extreme weather. For example, warmer air and oceans are contributing to more intense hurricanes, with record-breaking amounts of rain and rapidly intensifying windspeeds.
Wright denies that people are experiencing the extreme weather that they are, in fact, experiencing, and he misrepresents the IPCC in the process. In reality, the IPCC (a body comprised of thousands of experts from around the world who synthesize the most recent developments in climate science) writes in their Sixth Assessment Report, Chapter 11 of Working Group 1 on Weather and Climate Extreme Events in a Changing Climate: “It is an established fact that human-induced greenhouse gas emissions have led to an increased frequency and/or intensity of some weather and climate extremes since pre-industrial time, in particular for temperature extremes.”
Real-world observations conducted by NOAA show the dramatic increase in billion-dollar extreme weather and climate-related disaster events in the US since 1980. Climate change has contributed to worsening several of these kinds of disasters—including floods, droughts, and wildfires—alongside growing development in risky areas.
In 2024, at least 568 lives were lost in 27 separate disasters that each reported damages of $1 billion or more, with a total economic cost of at least $182.7 billion. This year is already off to a sobering start, with early estimates on the California wildfires ranging as high as $150 billion in damages.
Wright’s false claims are shameful and should be particularly difficult to defend during hearings before a Committee which includes Senators Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, whose constituents suffered through the 2023 wildfires; Alex Padilla of California, whose constituents in Los Angeles are losing lives and homes as I write; and other lawmakers representing millions of Americans living through or recovering from disasters made worse by climate change.
The US can meet its climate targets.
Wright cites the persistent high price of oil, record profits for fossil fuel companies, and even his own personal wealth as evidence that a transition to renewable energy is not happening. His claim that a transition to a cleaner energy system is impossible because Wright and his allies have succeeded in delaying it is nonsense.
UCS has documented that a transition to a cleaner energy system is feasible and would result in significant, long-term public health and economic benefits. By rapidly phasing out fossil fuels and transitioning to clean energy, the United States can meet its climate targets with lower near-term energy costs and only modest long-term costs. UCS modeling has found enormous economic, health, and climate benefits to transforming the energy system—including more than $800 billion in annual public health savings, and nearly $1.3 trillion in avoided climate damages by 2050.
Clean, renewable energy contributes to reliability.
In addition to dirty air and dirty water, the industry that made Wright wealthy also has a dirty secret: it’s unreliable.
The recent failures of the gas system, including gas plants, under extreme weather conditions have led to rolling blackouts, with serious safety and health consequences for communities left without power during critical times of need. Looking closely at recent extreme winter weather events, a UCS analysis found that gas plants were disproportionately vulnerable to failure. By contrast, renewable energy sources can be more reliable during challenging weather conditions.
Carbon pollution is pollution.
Wright argues that rising CO2 levels are not dangerous. The EPA has found the current (or any increasing) mix of atmospheric concentrations of six greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, poses a threat to human health. The EPA engaged in a public process that took more than two years and included exhaustive review of the scientific literature to reach this finding. And while Wright claims labelling CO2 as pollution is a “marketing” tactic, it was the U.S. Supreme Court, not the wind or solar industries, that forced the EPA to act on the basis of existing law, the Clean Air Act.
Wind and solar are clean energy.
While all energy sources have impacts, wind and solar are much cleaner than fossil fuels. Wright’s frequent, narrow focus on the use of fossil fuels in the manufacturing and construction of wind turbines and solar panels is highly misleading and doesn’t tell the whole story.
The heat-trapping emissions from these activities are minor compared to the lifecycle emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels. In fact, overall lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from generating electricity from methane gas and coal are 11 to 23 times higher than solar and 37 to 77 higher than wind, respectively, according to data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). And unlike fossil fuels, electricity generated by wind and solar does not use water or produce any emissions or wastes that can contaminate the air, land, or waterways.
Defining the energy produced by wind, solar, and other renewable sources as “clean” is a factual description of what that energy does to our world when we use it, compared to burning dirty coal, oil, and methane. It is obvious why someone who has made a fortune in the business of dirty energy might not like that label, but if the dirty shoe fits….
These are the questions senators need to ask.
Again, the motivation to engage in disinformation comes when accurate information is threatening. For example, when people say, “This is not about the money,” you can be sure it is absolutely about the money.
A Senate confirmation hearing should provide senators and the public an accurate picture of the nominees’ views and fitness for public service. President-elect Trump has selected Chris Wright for the Department of Energy because he will double down on the production and use of the same old, dirty energy resources that have made him wealthy; wealth that Wright and other industry figures have used to fund the Trump campaign. (My colleagues have also shared insightful advice that should guide Senators’ approach in evaluating these nominees.)
Rather than engaging in deceptive claims designed to turn facts on their heads, Wright should simply be honest about his views and let the Senate—and the public—decide whether he is the right person to set US energy policy for the next four years.