Trump taps fracking company executive for energy secretary
President-elect Donald Trump announced Saturday that Chris Wright is his nominee to lead the Department of Energy.
Wright, who must be approved by the Senate, is the chief executive of Liberty Energy – the world’s second-largest fracking services company – and is one of the industry’s most outspoken critics of the effort to combat climate change.
"There is no climate crisis, and we're not in the midst of an energy transition either," Wright said in a video posted to LinkedIn last year.
A 2021 study published in the environmental journal Environmental Research Letters, found that 99% of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change.
"I think by far the biggest challenge with climate change today is policies pursued in the name of climate change that make energy more expensive and less reliable," Wright told the Heritage Foundation last year.
According to the World Resources Institute, “solar and wind now provide the cheapest power for 67% of the world” and in the United States, wind is the cheapest source of new bulk electricity per megawatt-hour.
"As Secretary of Energy, Chris will be a key leader, driving innovation, cutting red tape, and ushering in a new 'Golden Age of American Prosperity and Global Peace,'" Trump said.
-ABC News' Lalee Ibssa, Peter Charalambous and Matthew Glasser
