Donald Trump has chosen fossil fuel executive Chris Wright as his pick for Energy Secretary.
The CEO of Colorado-based Liberty Energy, which provides services for hydraulic fracturing processes in the oil and gas industry, has said that the terms “clean energy” and “energy transition” are deceptive and alarmist marketing terms.
“‘Energy transition’ is another term that has been used to justify policies that deploy large government subsidies and mandates to enrich the well-off and connected, while impoverishing everyone else,” Wright said in a video posted to his own LinkedIn account account.
Wright is seen as a hard liner on climate policy, and has advocated for the construction of pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure to accommodate rising energy demand.
“It would be hard to call wind or solar ‘clean’ or ‘low environmental impact’ with a straight face”, Wright said in the video, referring to the cement, steel, and polysilicon required for the production of turbines and solar panels.
Wright will also sit on a new Trump creation, the National Energy Council, which the incoming president said will oversee “the path to US energy dominance”.
The department will do so “by cutting red tape, enhancing private sector investments across all sectors of the Economy, and by focusing on innovation over longstanding, but totally unnecessary, regulation”.