By Timothy Gardner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Chris Wright, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head the U.S. Energy Department, told U.S. senators in his confirmation hearing on Wednesday his first priority is expanding domestic energy production including liquefied natural gas and nuclear power.
Wright, 60, believes fossil fuels are the key to ending world poverty, which is a greater problem than climate change’s “distant” threat, according to a report he wrote as CEO of oilfield services company Liberty Energy.
The hearing was briefly stopped several times by protesters with at least one shouting about the deadly fires in Los Angeles and the role fossil fuels play in global warming.
Wright supports some fossil fuel alternatives, such as small nuclear power reactors, which are not yet commercially available, and geothermal power. But he has criticized solar and wind power as insufficient.
“Previous administrations have viewed energy as a liability instead of the immense national asset that it is,” Wright told the Senate energy committee.
“To compete globally, we must expand energy production, including commercial nuclear and liquefied natural gas, and cut the cost of energy for Americans.”
U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas, a super-chilled exportable form of natural gas, hit a record in 2023 thanks to the shale boom. The U.S. now produces oil and gas at a higher rate than any other country ever has.
Wright, an engineer who studied fusion energy, is expected to win a majority in the 100-member Senate, now controlled by Republicans, and will step down from Liberty once confirmed.
Wright would replace Jennifer Granholm, who urged caution on the issuance of new permits to export LNG, saying unfettered exports will boost emissions of gases blamed for climate change and risk raising fuel prices for manufacturers and home owners.
The top Democrat on the committee, Senator Martin Heinrich, from fossil fuel-producing New Mexico, said after meeting Wright last week the two agreed that the Energy Department “must help speed the expansion of interregional transmission infrastructure to meet our nation’s skyrocketing demand for clean power.”
Heinrich said companies have invested nearly $500 billion in clean energy after legislation passed in recent years including President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, and told Wright that programs in those laws should not be clawed back in order to protect clean energy and the jobs that come with it.
Wright is expected to work on a new energy council with Doug Burgum, Trump’s nominee for interior secretary.
Wright said that the U.S. must remove barriers to progress on energy. Trump, a Republican who takes office on Jan. 20, may declare a national energy emergency, allowing him to fast-track permits for new power infrastructure and other energy projects.
The move would fit into Trump’s agenda to expand energy output as U.S. power demand begins to surge for the first time in decades and to reverse President Joe Biden’s pause on approvals of LNG exports.
Biden passed a signature climate change law with billions of dollars to support alternative energy projects. But Congress has failed so far to pass a permitting bill for the transmission infrastructure needed to move huge amounts of power from high-tech projects like renewables and planned new nuclear reactors.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Hugh Lawson)
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