Chris Wright, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice as secretary of Energy, told senators Wednesday he supports expanding and strengthening the U.S. transmission system, signaling his willingness to add one of President Joe Biden’s top energy goals to the Trump agenda.
At his confirmation hearing, Wright — a self-styled science geek turned energy entrepreneur — steered carefully through Democrats’ pointed questions to stand fully behind Trump’s fossil-fuel-friendly “abundance” agenda while staking out his own, more nuanced positions on climate change. No serious challenges to his Senate confirmation appeared in the hearing.
“I am committed to growing our electricity grid and our energy production and removing those barriers that are standing in the way,” said Wright, chief executive of Liberty Energy, a Denver-based oil field services company.
At the start of the Biden presidency, transmission expansion was prioritized as the means for dramatically accelerating long-distance energy delivery from prime wind and solar regions to urban centers. In the past two years, DOE expanded the case, saying a bigger grid was a vital added defense against large-scale extreme weather assaults and a conduit for more competitively priced power. Now, grid officials are waiting anxiously to see how the policy teams under Trump view transmission expansion.
A pivotal test would come early this year if, as expected, Congress takes up legislation to speed permitting and siting of energy infrastructure. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) brought up efforts in Congress to couple regulatory relief for power lines with Republican plans to speed up fossil fuels pipeline projects.
He told Heinrich, “I’m aligned with you and will seek to find the best ways to improve our transmission grid, including expansion and new lines.”
At several points in the hearing, Wright put himself more in line with Trump’s denunciations of the Inflation Reduction Act and energy provisions of the bipartisan infrastructure law, Biden’s signature climate victories. The estimated $1.6 trillion in multiyear authorized spending and tax credits will not be fully allocated when the Biden administration ends Monday, passing into the Trump team’s hands.
Asked Wednesday whether the Energy Department under Trump would continue funding congressionally authorized grid improvements with a yes or no answer, Wright said, “Well, I’m not sure it’s quite as simple as that, but I think that my short answer would be yes, of course.” He added, “The only way I roll would be to follow the laws and statutes of the of the United States of America.”
On a panel Wednesday, U.S. grid officials said action by the incoming Trump administration to cut barriers to energy development would be welcome. Forecasts of record increases in electricity demand to power data centers, factories and the electrification of housing and transportation are driving concern that power supplies aren’t expanding fast enough.
A DOE report last month found that data centers powerful enough to handle the highest-tech chips for artificial intelligence could account for 12 percent of the country’s electricity by 2028. States and utilities have been grappling with how to plan for the surge in electricity demand.
Across the Eastern grid, in particular, lower-carbon sources of power aren’t coming online fast enough to replace older, dirtier power plants as they shut down. Plans for building out transmission grids are gaining momentum, but speeding that development remains a political and policy challenge for a secretary of Energy of any party.
“We are going to need long distance transmission. We are going to need large power plants, and we’re going to need them quickly,” said Jim Robb, chief executive of the North American Electric Reliability Corp., speaking on a panel sponsored by the U.S. Energy Association.
“So to the extent that a presidential order increases the skids for permitting reform to get projects in place to address some of the fuel supply issues that we’re starting to see, particularly with natural gas, God bless them,” Robb added. “That’s exactly what this country needs right now.”
What didn’t come up during Wright’s confirmation hearing is also notable.
Executive actions Trump is expected to take during his first week in the Oval Office run the gamut: boosting natural gas exports, halting federal offshore wind permits and lifting rules around oil and gas methane emissions, among them.
But Trump said during the campaign that he would “declare a national emergency to allow us to dramatically increase energy production, generation and supply.” What that looks like, if that step were to be taken, is very unclear. It didn’t come up at Wright’s hearing, and how exactly an executive order would detangle and solve complex business and regulatory issues around bringing vastly more energy supply to the nation’s grids is also unclear.
Some legal researchers conclude that Trump could invoke parts of the Federal Power Act, some designed for wartime use, to halt retirements of some natural gas or coal-fired power plants in order to decrease the risk that power demand outstrips supply later in this decade.
Duane Highley, chief executive of the Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, a Colorado-based cooperative organization, said an executive order blocking retirements of all fossil fuel power plants was not wanted.
Coal plants that can’t produce energy as cheaply as renewable resources are no longer able to compete. “So in some instances, we would still seek a plant retirement,” he said. “We wouldn’t really welcome an executive order saying you can’t retire it if it’s an economic issue for our members.”
Elliot Mainzer, chief executive of the California Independent System Operator, said utilities and grid operators all feel the urgency to bring more power generation of all kinds onto the grid.
But, he noted, what “energy emergency” means from the perspective of a Trump administration is a mystery.
Climate change? ‘Absolutely, senator.’
Wright went out of his way in his confirmation hearing to express support for the development of nearly every energy technology, from solar to geothermal to advanced nuclear power.
But Wright has also been a staunch advocate for using fossil fuels to address energy poverty in poorer countries. And while his company Liberty Energy invests in zero-carbon technology, including geothermal and small nuclear reactors, Wright views government support for wind and solar power through the lens of conservative critics.
During a debate in 2023, Wright rebuked Biden’s policies. “They’re deploying politically popular, low-energy density, intermittent, unreliable energy sources,” he said, “that have just destabilized our electricity, made energy more expensive, don’t really have a prospect of being a meaningful solution in the future.”
Still, it isn’t clear how Wright will balance his ideas around limiting federal support for renewable technology with the need to find alternatives to burning coal, oil and natural gas in developed countries like the United States.
In his testimony Wednesday, Wright acknowledged that burning hydrocarbons has increased heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. Wright told senators that (unlike Trump) he does not challenge the reality of climate change.
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said, “You have said before this committee and in other places that climate change is real. Is that correct?”
“Absolutely, senator,” Wright replied.
But Wright emphasized his unity with Trump. He was asked during the hearing about a Washington Post report last year that Trump had met with oil executives at Mar-a-Lago and asked for campaign contributions while promising to deliver policies supporting oil and gas development. Wright denied the report.
“I was at the dinner, and the president put forward no such deal,” Wright said.
He pinned his support for fossil fuels — particularly exports of U.S. oil and gas — to the large part of the world’s population whose access to energy lags far behind what Americans are used to.
“There’s 7 billion people in the world that don’t live lives anything like we do,” he said. “And of course, they should get what we have. And through market forces and improvement and leadership, particularly leadership from President-elect Trump, I think we’re going to see more abundant energy resource coming out of our country and hopefully out of the world, so that everyone else can live lives like we do.”
Wright was pushed on the point by Sen. Angus King (I-Maine). “What if you’re wrong? What if we’re wrong, and something really drastic happens” with climate change that makes areas of the planet uninhabitable. “It’s not as easy as saying we’re going to help the Third World and we’re going to keep burning fossil fuels. There is a significant risk that we have to have in our calculation,” King said.
“I think we need to be humble about that,” Wright replied. “We don’t know what’s coming in the future, but advancement of energy technologies that grow the amount of energy we have, to drive down the cost, the quality and lower emissions, those are all wins in all scenarios.”
“As a career entrepreneur, a free-market advocate, my goal is to have the small role for government in business, particularly in mature businesses,” he said. “The best role for the federal government is basic research and helping launch new technologies that are just getting their footing.”
