Chris Wright, Chief Executive of Liberty Energy, has been nominated to lead the Department of Energy in the Trump administration.
Wright is a vocal critic of the energy transition as envisaged by most Western governments to date, instead calling for energy realism and prioritizing the supply security and affordability of energy rather than its emission footprint.
“Three decades from now the vast majority of energy will come from hydrocarbons,” Wright told Bloomberg two years ago in an interview, also warning that subsidizing wind and solar would not only not help reduce emissions but would end up increasing electricity prices and rendering the grid more vulnerable.
Indeed, this is already happening in Europe, with the Czech government recently announcing a retroactive cut in solar subsidies because it can no longer afford to support the industry.
Solar developers threatened to sue the government, saying that without subsidies there would be bankruptcies. Czech electricity consumers pay some of the most expensive electricity on the continent, along with Germans and Britons—both champions of the transition.
“There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition, either,” Wright said last year in one of a series of video presentations he posted on LinkedIn, challenging the transition narrative and urging a more realistic approach to energy.
President-elect Donald Trump said that Wright “will be a key leader, driving innovation, cutting red tape, and ushering in a new ‘Golden Age of American Prosperity and Global Peace,’” as quoted by the Financial Times.
Wright will also be appointed to a new federal entity dubbed a Council of National Energy, whose task would be to do a complete makeover of U.S. energy policies across government agencies, the FT reported.
“This Council will oversee the path to U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE by cutting red tape, enhancing private sector investments across all sectors of the Economy, and by focusing on INNOVATION over long-standing, but totally unnecessary, regulation,” Trump said.
Source: https://energynewsafrica.com