# Chris Wright **Chris Wright** (b. January 15, 1965, Colorado) is the 17th **Secretary of Energy**, confirmed 59–38 on **February 3, 2025**. A fracking entrepreneur — founder of Pinnacle Technologies (1992) and of **Liberty Energy** (2011), one of the largest hydraulic-fracturing service companies in North America — he is the administration's most articulate spokesman for the "energy dominance" doctrine and its most credentialed climate-policy skeptic: an MIT-trained engineer who argues that the risk of *too little* atmospheric CO₂ outweighs the risk of more, that climate change is not driving extreme weather, and that net-zero-by-2050 is "a colossal train wreck." He sits in the vault as the cabinet-level answer to a recurring question — what does climate denial look like when it is run by a competent engineer rather than a talk-radio host? ## Career - **Education**: BS mechanical engineering and MS electrical engineering, MIT; graduate work at UC Berkeley. - **Pinnacle Technologies** (founded 1992; CEO to 2006) — fracture-mapping technology that helped make shale gas commercial. Chaired Stroud Energy, sold 2006. - **Liberty Energy** (founded 2011; CEO until his confirmation) — valued around $2.8 billion by early 2023. Wright's public persona was built here: the 2020s "Bettering Human Lives" reports and viral videos in which he drank fracking fluid and argued that hydrocarbons are the precondition of modern life. - **Nominated November 16, 2024**; committee 15–6 (January 23, 2025); Senate 59–38 (February 3, 2025); sworn in the same day. Serves on the [[Doug Burgum]]-chaired National Energy Dominance Council. ## The tenure — what he has actually done - **The climate report (July 2025).** Wright convened a five-member "Climate Working Group" — John Christy, Judith Curry, Steven Koonin, Ross McKitrick, Roy Spencer, the best-known contrarians in the field — whose report, issued in July 2025, was built to support the EPA's rescission of the 2021 greenhouse-gas endangerment finding. The Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists sued under the Federal Advisory Committee Act; DOE **dissolved the group on September 3, 2025** and withdrew the report from comment, and a federal judge later held the group had been unlawfully constituted while declining to strike its contents. See [[Climate Change Denialism]] and [[The Climate Denial Machine]]. - **Coal by emergency order.** Beginning with the **J.H. Campbell** plant in Michigan (1,407 MW; order of May 23, 2025, renewed repeatedly), Wright has used [[Federal Power Act]] § 202(c) "emergency" authority to forbid the retirement of coal plants in Michigan, Washington, Colorado, Florida and the Midwest. Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois and the [[Sierra Club]] challenged the Campbell orders in the D.C. Circuit; DOE's brief (March 17, 2026) argued the statute lets the Secretary declare an emergency that "need not be imminent." Consumers Energy reported roughly $254 million spent keeping Campbell running through December 2025 against $119 million in revenue, and sought $135 million from ratepayers across [[PJM Interconnection]]'s neighbor MISO. The pattern — a wartime provision turned into routine industrial policy for a declining fuel — is the energy-sector instance of [[Emergency Powers Crosswalk]]. - **Grid and AI load.** Directed [[Federal Energy Regulatory Commission]] in October 2025 to move on large-load (data-center) interconnection; announced in November 2025 that nuclear projects would receive the largest share of DOE loan authority. See [[Stargate]], nuclear power and [[The Quest for 90 Gigawatts]]. - **Venezuela and the Iran war.** Visited Venezuela in February 2026, after [[Nicolás Maduro]]'s capture, to negotiate oil-sector cooperation; on *Face the Nation* (September 6, 2026) he called the arrangement a "win-win" with "zero" taxpayer cost, said Venezuelan output had grown "50% in the eight months" of U.S. involvement, said a nuclear deal with Iran might have to "wait for a new regime," and blamed a record $5.89 diesel price on lost global refining capacity. A March 2026 post about a Navy tanker escort, deleted after it moved oil prices, is the tenure's one self-inflicted market episode. See [[Iran War 2026]] and [[Strait of Hormuz]]. ## Why he matters Wright is the proof that the administration's energy policy is not merely deregulation. Keeping coal plants open by emergency order, steering loan capital to nuclear, and negotiating discounted Venezuelan crude are all *interventions* — state-directed allocation in the name of "dominance." The right kept the tools of industrial policy and swapped the theory of harm; compare [[Industrial Policy]] and [[Harold Hamm]], the oilman whose political money made the appointment possible. ## "There may not be a nuclear agreement" (September 2026) Pressed by Martha Raddatz of ABC News on **7 September 2026** about when a nuclear agreement with Iran might arrive — after six months of elevated fuel prices with nothing on the table — Wright answered: > [!quote] Chris Wright, ABC News, 7 September 2026 > "There may not be a nuclear agreement. It may be simply destroying their capabilities to do it. An agreement may await a next administration in Iran. We simply don't know that." This is the clearest statement by a cabinet officer that the war's stated objective may have no negotiated endpoint, and that the administration's working assumption includes waiting out the Iranian government. It sits directly against [[Donald Trump]]'s public framing the same week, that prices would fall "precipitously" to "[t]hree Dollars a gallon, but ultimately, below Two Dollars a gallon" once the United States wins. See [[Iran War 2026]] and [[Gas Prices]]. ## See Also - [[Department of Energy]] · [[Trump 2.0 Cabinet Hub]] · [[Energy Sector]] - [[Federal Power Act]] · [[PJM Interconnection]] · [[International Energy Agency]] - [[Climate Change Denialism]] · [[The Climate Denial Machine]] · [[Science Denial]] - [[Donald Trump]] · [[Doug Burgum]] · [[Harold Hamm]]