(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump’s choice for Energy secretary said the US must remove bureaucratic barriers and “unleash” production of nuclear power as well as liquified natural gas, according to written testimony before his Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday.
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“The security of our nation begins with energy,” Chris Wright said in remarks prepared for the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “Previous administrations have viewed energy as a liability instead of the immense national asset that it is.”
Wright, the founder of Liberty Energy Inc., an oil and natural gas fracking services company, said his priorities would also include a focus on innovation and technology breakthroughs.
Testifying on his 60th birthday, he said his first priority was to “unleash American energy at home and abroad to restore energy dominance,” a term that resonated throughout the first Trump administration.
As Liberty’s chief executive officer, Wright has been an unapologetic advocate for his industry, proclaiming the moral virtues of fossil fuels and even drank fracking fluid to refute opponents who questioned its safety.
The choice of Wright, who has no previous Washington experience, is indicative of the incoming president’s hard pivot toward fossil fuels after years of Biden administration policies that benefited renewable energy and sought to restrict global warming.
He has assailed subsidies for wind and solar power and said fossil fuels were crucial for spreading prosperity and lifting people from poverty. He has called the threat posed by climate change exaggerated.
“There is no climate crisis. And we are not in the midst of an energy transition either,” Wright said in a video posted on his LinkedIn page. “Life on earth is simply impossible without carbon dioxide — hence the term carbon pollution is outrageous.”
While the Energy Department has little authority over oil and gas development, Wright, if confirmed, would oversee an organization with a vast, complex mission that includes helping to maintain the nation’s nuclear warheads, studying supercomputers and maintaining the country’s several-hundred-million-barrel stockpile of crude oil.
Alluding to some of the department’s many responsibilities, Wright said “we must protect and accelerate the work of the department’s national laboratory network to secure America’s competitive edge and its security.”