Trump’s pick for energy secretary loves fracking so much, he drank its liquid

Over the weekend, President-elect Donald Trump announced Chris Wright, an oil and gas executive, to lead the Department of Energy.

Wright is the CEO of fracking and oilfield-services company Liberty Energy. He’s outspoken about supporting the oil and gas industry and has called for more fossil fuel use. He has no prior experience in government.

One of the DOE’s major responsibilities is nuclear security (including overseeing nuclear weapons and nuclear power), but the department also focuses on national energy policy. Under President Joe Biden, the DOE made strides around renewable energy and even EV battery recycling.

Wright is expected to shift the department’s focus away from clean energy initiatives like solar and geothermal technologies. Wright also sits on the board of nuclear tech company Oklo. (Sam Altman is an investor and chairman of that board), and could ramp up nuclear production. Wright has said that nuclear should go from 4% of energy production to 10%.

“There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition,” Wright said in a video posted to his LinkedIn last year. He also called carbon pollution an “outrageous” term, citing the fact that life on earth needs carbon dioxide. He did, however, acknowledge that carbon dioxide does absorb infrared radiation, contributing to global warming—but added that “there is no such thing as ‘clean’ energy or ‘dirty’ energy.’”

He has also said it would be hard to call wind or solar power “clean” or “low environmental impact,” citing the cobalt and copper mines that provide materials for batteries and solar panels and which are rife with human rights abuses; as well as the impacts of processing toxic rare earth metals. (Wright himself is also on the board of EMX Royalty Corp., a mining royalty company.) The World Resources Institute says wind and solar can be built with “minimal environmental impacts,” and that renewables “generate more energy than is used in their production, and produce fewer emissions than other power sources over their lifetime.”

Wright’s has also been a long proponent of fracking. In 2019, he drank fracking fluid on camera to demonstrate its safety. Also called frac fluid, that liquid is the mixture of water and chemicals pumped below the earth’s surface in order to crack the rocks and unlock natural gas and crude oil.

“Team Liberty is drinking frac fluid to illustrate that the BIG energy issue of our day is not health risks from fracking but lack of access to affordable energy for the poor in the US and the world!” the video caption reads. (Wright has said previously that the world needs more fossil fuel production to lift people out of poverty.) The Natural Resources Defense Counsel, however, has said that the chemicals used in fracking formulas are considered hazardous to human health. The process of fracking also contaminates groundwater and pollutes the air, causing health hazards.

Oil and gas production did skyrocket under the Biden administration, even as he made renewable energy advancements. Under the next Trump administration it could increase even more, and Wright’s nomination highlights its focus on fossil fuels. During his campaign, Trump led chants of “drill, baby, drill,” and also met with oil executives, telling them that they should donate $1 billion to his campaign because he would roll back environmental rolls that hindered their expansion.

“The nomination of Chris Wright makes crystal clear the fossil fuel industry’s outsized and undue influence on shaping and implementing the Trump Administration’s agenda,” Jeff Deyette, deputy director of the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement. Deyette added that Wright’s current roles pose questions about a conflict of interest, as Oklo receives money from the DOE.

“DOE must prioritize confronting the reality of the climate crisis, maintaining focus on the technological and policy innovation required to enable a rapid phase out of dirty fossil fuels and transition to clean and reliable renewable energy,” he added. “Unfortunately, Wright seems to prefer keeping the public on the hook for subsidizing big polluters and lining oil and gas executives’ pockets—even if it sacrifices the nation’s health, environment and economy.”