President-Elect Donald Trump announced his intention to nominate oil industry CEO Chris Wright as Secretary of the Department of Energy. Wright is an outspoken opponent and antagonist of climate science and has been one of the key supporters behind the anti-responsible investing movement. His company, Liberty Energy, filed a lawsuit this past March against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) climate risk disclosure rule.
Immediately following Trump’s announcement, policymakers, advocates, and industry experts came forward to warn against the selection, saying that Wright’s nomination would create disastrous consequences for the American consumer and the environment.
Fact: Wright is an outspoken evangelist for the fossil fuel industry – and has gone as far as drinking fracking fluid to defend the industry.
- In a 2019 video posted to Facebook, Wright drank a glass of fracking fluid, saying: “To your health and the longer lives and healthier lives of billions of people around the world from oil and gas.”
- Wright has been a vocal critic of renewable energy. In 2024, he blasted subsidies for wind and solar power saying “they’ve made electricity more expensive and the grid less reliable.” Wright has also said that wind and solar energy “have virtually no prospect of being meaningful contributors to [the] electricity system.”
- Wright’s current company, Liberty Energy, has served companies like Exxon and ConocoPhillips.
Fact: Wright has repeatedly attacked the SEC’s climate risk disclosure rule in an attempt to protect his own bottom line and that of his wealthy friends in the oil and gas industry.
- Wright has been one of the most outspoken opponents of the SEC’s climate risk disclosure rule, which aims to provide investors transparency into companies’ greenhouse gas emissions and their climate-related risks. In March 2024, Wright’s company Liberty Energy filed a lawsuit against the SEC in an attempt to stop the rule from taking effect.
- He has testified against the rule in front of Congress, arguing that the rule was a demonstration of “ignorance” by people who wrongfully believe we are going to transition away from fossil fuels in the next 30 years. In the same hearing, he falsely claimed that the rule would create “immense costs” for companies like his own – in a transparent attempt to protect his own bottom line.
Fact: A die-hard climate crisis denier, Wright has used his platform to espouse climate science misinformation. He currently sits on the board of anti-climate science advocacy group Pacific Research Institute.
- Wright has repeatedly denied climate science and used misleading and misinterpreted data to argue that there isn’t a climate crisis. In a 2023 video posted on LinkedIn, he falsely claimed: “We have seen no increase in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts or floods despite endless fear-mongering of the media, politicians and activists. The only thing resembling a crisis with respect to climate change is the regressive, opportunity-squelching policies justified in the name of climate change.”
- He currently sits on the Board of Directors of the Pacific Research Institute, an anti-climate science advocacy organization that has been a vehicle for Big Oil’s attacks against responsible investing in recent years and pushes misleading campaigns about the dangers of the climate crisis.
- Wright has called climate change activists “alarmist” and criticized efforts to combat climate change as “Soviet-style communism.”
