The executive has taken a defiant approach to fighting climate change by attacking policies that call for a shift from fossil fuels.

Updated November 16, 2024 at 6:43 p.m. EST | Published November 16, 2024 at 5:01 p.m. EST

By Evan Halper, Maxine Joselow, Maegan Vazquez and Josh Dawsey

Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright, center, talks with NYSE Group President Thomas Farley on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange when the company became publicly traded in January 2018. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters)

President-elect Donald Trump announced on Saturday that he has selected Chris Wright, the head of fracking company Liberty Energy and a skeptic of mainstream climate science, to lead the Department of Energy and to serve on a new National Energy Council.

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In his announcement, Trump credited Wright as “one of the pioneers who helped launch the American Shale Revolution,” adding that “as Secretary of Energy, Chris will be a key leader, driving innovation, cutting red tape.”

Trump on Friday tapped North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) as interior secretary and as “energy czar” to oversee the new National Energy Council he announced. The president-elect said the council will comprise all agencies and departments involved in the production, regulation and transportation of “ALL forms of American Energy.”

In Wright, Trump has chosen a skeptic of the scientific consensus on global warming who argues the “climate crisis” is a myth. The fracking executive runs a foundation focused on dispelling the conventional wisdom on climate change and promoting expanded fossil fuel production as a solution to many of the world’s problems, an approach others say would drive dangerous levels of warming.

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Wright is an MIT graduate who developed new techniques for fracking — extracting natural gas by creating cracks in the Earth’s bedrock — that helped advance the shale gas revolution.

“There is no ‘climate crisis,’” Wright said in a video he posted on LinkedIn last year, adding that “the only thing resembling a crisis with respect to climate change is the regressive, opportunity-squelching policies justified in the name of climate change.”

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Those assertions conflict sharply with the conclusions of the world’s leading climate scientists affiliated with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Its latest report concluded the world is quickly running out of time to avoid catastrophic warming, and nothing short of a “quantum leap” in the energy transition would contain climate change to levels manageable by society.

Wright’s arguments that temperatures and sea levels are not rising quickly also clash with the IPCC’s findings. While other oil and gas companies acknowledge such findings and say they are working to reduce emissions, Wright is among the industry executives who take a defiant approach, attacking policies that call for shifting away from fossil fuels.

Wright has also attacked critics of the U.S. fossil fuel industry. In 2021, when North Face refused to make branded jackets for a Texas-based oil and gas firm, Wright made a YouTube video slamming the leaders of the outdoor clothing company as hypocrites, saying they rely on synthetic fabrics derived from oil and gas.

Wright emerged as a front-runner for the role of energy secretary at the behest of oil tycoon Harold Hamm, one of Trump’s closest allies. Hamm, who has been advising Trump on energy, told the publication Hart Energy that Wright is his top pick for the job and that “he is one of the most articulate people that I know of in energy and from our industry.”

Like Hamm, Wright ranked as a major donor to the Trump campaign.

After Trump asked oil industry executives to help steer $1 billion toward his campaign during an April dinner at his Mar-a-Lago Club, Wright donated more than $273,000 to pro-Trump super PACs and the Republican National Committee, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Wright and his wife also co-hosted an August fundraiser for Trump at a golf and ski resort in Big Sky, Montana.

“It is not surprising, but still appalling, that Trump’s pick for Secretary of Energy is a climate-denying Big Oil executive,” Tiernan Sittenfeld, who leads government affairs at the League of Conservation Voters, said in a statement. “With the nomination of Chris Wright, Trump is following through on the $1 billion offer he made to Big Oil at a dinner this spring.”

Wright’s appointment puts a strident opponent of clean-energy subsidies in a key Cabinet post as the Trump White House will be weighing whether to rescind billions of dollars in such incentives. Trump has repeatedly called for canceling the subsidies, which are helping to fund a range of climate-friendly endeavors, from consumers purchasing electric vehicles to oil companies investing in green hydrogen.

As energy secretary, Wright would be deeply involved in the allocation of such subsidies, as well as federal loan guarantees to energy projects. He would be in charge of the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal, and he would oversee the domestic nuclear energy industry when the sector is seeking to extend the lives of existing reactors and bring new reactor technologies to market.

Wright’s antipathy toward clean-energy subsidies and rules that penalize fossil fuel emissions contrasts with positions taken by Burgum. As governor of North Dakota, Burgum called for the state to become carbon-neutral by 2030, though he favored reaching this goal through nascent technologies, such as those designed to capture carbon dioxide and store it deep underground.

One of the biggest projects for capturing and burying greenhouse gas emissions in North Dakota is being bankrolled by Hamm. Such technologies, which environmentalists caution are not an adequate solution to climate change, rely heavily on federal subsidies.

Another big challenge Wright would confront at the Energy Department is the nation’s power crunch, as demand for electricity from data centers, the manufacturing boom and electric vehicle adoption strain the nation’s power grid. Large new power transmission and distribution projects are urgently needed but have been stymied by fights over who should pay for them, the emissions impacts of different types of power, and the rights of landowners who live in the path of proposed projects.

At the same time, the department is at the center of a major fight over exports of liquefied natural gas, or LNG. The Biden administration in January announced a “pause” on approving new LNG export facilities, warning of their major climate impacts. Wright would be tasked with lifting that pause and getting permits issued for billions of dollars worth of the carbon-intensive projects.

Other oil industry executives cheered his appointment.

“Trump is dead set on reclaiming America’s dominance, and U.S. oil is our power play. Chris Wright brings industry experience to help roll out Trump’s energy vision,” said Dan Eberhart, chief executive of the oil-field services company Canary and a Trump donor.

Mike Sommers, president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry’s top lobbying arm in Washington, said he hopes Wright immediately ends the pause on LNG approvals.

“We look forward to working with him once confirmed to bolster American geopolitical strength by lifting DOE’s pause on LNG export permits and ensuring the open access of American energy for our allies around the world,” Sommers said.