Chris Wright, the fracking magnate and likely next U.S. energy secretary, makes a moral case for fossil fuels.
Chris Wright, the founder and chief executive of Liberty Energy, in 2018.
Credit Andy Cross/The Denver Post, via Associated Press
His position, laid out in speeches and podcasts, is that the world’s poorest people need oil, gas and coal to realize the benefits of modern life that Americans and others in rich nations take for granted. Only fossil fuels, he says, can bring prosperity to millions who still burn wood, dung or charcoal for basic needs like cooking food and heating homes.
“It’s just, I think, naïve or evil, or some combination of the two, to believe they should never have washing machines, they should never have access to electricity, they should never have modern medicine,” Mr. Wright said on the “Mission Zero” podcast last year. “We don’t want that to happen. And we simply don’t have meaningful substitutes for oil, gas and coal today.”
The argument offered by Mr. Wright, who has been chosen by President-elect Donald J. Trump to run the Energy Department, ignores the fact that wind, solar and other renewable energy are cleaner and increasingly cheaper than fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency says clean energy is coming online globally at an “unprecedented rate” and will play a significant role in the future. In some places, renewable energy has been able to displace fossil fuels.
Mr. Wright also skates past the climate impacts from burning more fossil fuels. Climate change is already having a disproportionate impact on poor nations, which are less able than rich countries to handle the rising seas, extreme weather, drought and other consequences of global warming.
“It’s pretty self-serving by the fossil fuel industry to assume the future is going to look exactly like the past,” said Joseph Curtin, a managing director on the power and climate team at the Rockefeller Foundation, which is working on expanding clean energy access in poor countries.
“That’s not based on any analytical rigor,” Mr. Curtin said. “It’s perhaps based in the need to sell fossil fuels and shroud it in a moral framework.”
Jody Freeman, the director of the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law, called Mr. Wright’s position “misleading, warped and selective.”
“It is not an intellectually serious argument,” she said. “It’s about creating a permission structure for not pursuing a more responsible energy policy.”
But by sheathing fossil fuels in humanitarian language as a solution to global poverty, Mr. Wright has emerged as one of the right’s most savvy salesmen for oil and gas. “His is the newest and freshest point of view I’ve seen,” Jeff Peeples, the host of “Mission Zero.” He said the oil and gas industry has been on the defensive when it comes to climate change.
“If a lot more executives in the oil and gas industry would make this argument, and make this intellectual case for the use of fossil fuels, I think the energy industry as a whole would have a lot better PR success,” Mr. Peeples said.
A self-described “nerd turned entrepreneur” and outdoor enthusiast who is often photographed in a fleece vest, Mr. Wright runs a fracking services company and frequently talks about his travels through Africa as informing his desire to tackle poverty.
“People that are burning wooden dung in their huts and want to have a propane stove, they want to get off their feet, ride on a bus or a motor scooter,” Mr. Wright said on the podcast “PetroNerds” last year.
The Trump transition team did not make Mr. Wright available for a telephone interview.
Mr. Wright’s views on developing nations are important; as energy secretary, he would not only oversee oil and gas exports from the United States but also partnerships with poor countries to create renewable energy.
The share of people gaining access to electricity has steadily grown globally, and fossil fuels are largely responsible. About 800 million people now lack access to electricity, down from more than 1.5 billion in 1998.
A new solar project in Gabon. A solar array can start producing electricity in months, while it can take years to build a gas-powered plant.Credit...Nao Mukadi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
But Ian Muir, head of insights at Catalyst Energy Advisors, a consulting firm, pointed out that renewables were now cheaper than fossil fuels in most countries where people lack electricity. Moreover, a solar array can start producing electricity in months, while it can take more than two years to build a gas-powered plant, he said.
The World Bank has found that solar mini grids could provide basic electricity to 380 million people in Africa by 2030 who do not currently have access to power. A Rockefeller Foundation study in 2021 found that investing in distributed renewable energy like rooftop solar panels, small-scale wind turbines and home battery storage systems could create 25 million jobs by the end of the decade in Asia and Africa. That is about 30 times the number of jobs that would be created by investments in oil, gas or coal in that period, the study found.
Moreover, he said, big fossil fuel plants in developing nations often tend to favor industries like mining rather than people who need electricity in their homes, so that their children can study at night or they can charge a cellphone.
Technologies like mini grids and rooftop solar can often move faster to provide the electricity access Mr. Wright talks about, he said.
While the coal industry for years presented its product as an antidote to poverty, Mr. Wright has become the new master of an old playbook.
His rhetoric echoes Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish author who gained prominence in 2001 with the English publication of his book “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” in which he accepted the reality of climate change but said governments should focus on reducing poverty rather than greenhouse gases. Mr. Lomborg was accused of cherry-picking data and misrepresenting science, but Mr. Wright called the book “fantastic” and has referred to Mr. Lomborg a friend.
In 2014, Alex Epstein, who argues against climate science and is a favorite of Fox News, published “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels,”which described coal, oil and gas as humanity’s best chance to thrive. (Mr. Wright has appeared on Mr. Epstein’s podcast, “Power Hour.”) That same year, Peabody Energy, then one of the world’s leading coal companies, began an ad campaign that extolled the virtues of coal for the world’s poor.
“Its déjà vu all over again,” said Robert J. Brulle, a sociologist at Brown University who studies fossil fuel misinformation campaigns. “They’re drawing on old tropes that have been around for 20, 30 years.”
Over the years, Mr. Wright built a reputation with gimmicks like drinking a shot of fracked water in a toast to environmental critics. In 2021, he commissioned billboards around Denver to heckle the outdoor clothing maker North Face after the company — whose products, like many other goods, contain petroleum — declined to brand a jacket with an oil company.
“That North Face puffer looks great on you. And it was made from fossil fuels,” read the signs.
Those who have worked with Mr. Wright described him as someone who sincerely wants to improve living standards.
“He’s a good person who wants to make the world better,” said Tisha Schuller, an energy consultant in Colorado and past president of the Colorado Oil & Gas Association who has worked closely with Mr. Wright.
After receiving a diploma from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr. Wright did graduate work on solar energy at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1992, he founded Pinnacle Technologies, which created software that Mr. Wright called “super nerdy” to measure the motion of fluid beneath the earth. It helped bring about a commercial shale gas revolution. Mr. Wright started Liberty Energy in 2011, and the company has partnered with others on small modular nuclear reactors and geothermal energy.
Mr. Wright’s stake in Liberty Energy is worth $50 million, according to Forbes, and a recent SEC filing put his compensation last year at $5.6 million. He helped establish a charity, the Bettering Human Lives Foundation, to promote cookstoves using liquefied petroleum gas in Kenya and elsewhere. They are considered better for the environment and health than traditional cooking fuels of kerosene, biomass and coal. Records show the foundation started in 2023 with $11,450 in assets and spent all of it on administrative costs. The foundation did not respond to a request to discuss its work.
Some who work on energy poverty said Mr. Wright’s views had merit.
Todd Moss, executive director of the Energy for Growth Hub, a research organization, said tackling climate change was not the responsibility of the world’s poorest countries who have done little to cause the problem. In some countries, fossil fuels may still be needed to power factories and industries to spur economic prosperity, he said. Any effort that is too strict and “puts climate above development” would hurt poor countries, Mr. Moss said.
But scientists have maintained that Mr. Wright has selectively used data to downplay the impacts of climate change.
While he acknowledges that the planet is warming, Mr. Wright has inaccurately said that it is a modest and distant threat. He has denied the well-established connection between climate change and extreme weather, wrongly claiming that hurricanes, droughts and floods are not becoming more intense.
“We’re impoverishing people today, those least able to bear it and afford it, for what the economic work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows is a slow-moving, modest impact two or three generations from now,” Mr. Wright said on the “WOW Factor” podcast last year. “That’s not a good trade-off.”
In fact, the I.P.C.C., the United Nations’ top scientific body, found last year with very high confidence that “there is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all.” It recommended nations make an immediate and drastic shift away from fossil fuels to prevent the planet from crossing a critical threshold for global warming within the next decade.
Mr. Wright “may not have read an I.P.C.C. report since 1990,” said Robert E. Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University and a lead author of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report published in 2021.
The bottom line. The extension of electricity into rural areas has been the main focus of efforts
to achieve universal access to reliable, affordable, and modern energy by 2030. On the African
continent and elsewhere, however, rapid urbanization has produced new patterns of human
settlement that blur the distinction between rural and urban. As a case study of Kenya
demonstrates, access metrics aggregated at the rural or urban level do not equip governments
and their partners to properly identify or target sites for electrification. Spatialized frameworks
and data that define space along a rural–urban continuum or as urban catchment areas can
improve policy makers’ understanding of the specific barriers to access that communities face.
Spotlight Kampala is a multi-institutional research collaboration of universities and community advocates that aims to highlight the inequities that informal urban communities face in accessing and using electricity. This report presents the findings of eight months of data collection that included surveys, interviews, remote power quality monitoring, infrastructure mapping, and community forums across 25 of Kampala’s approximately 60 informal communities. This research aims not only to provide baseline statistics on important dimensions of access like access rates, affordability, supply reliability and quality, but also to ground these learnings in the daily lived experience of Kampala’s informal residents. In doing so, the research teams hope to bridge the divide between researchers and policymakers by providing data that is action-oriented, and can catalyze further action of duty-bearers to find solutions to alleviate urban energy poverty for Kampala’s informal communities. This report details the findings and recommendations which emerged from the research team’s collective work to characterize and address inequalities in electricity access in informal communities in Kampala. Although 95% of households and businesses are connected to the electricity grid in some way, the findings show clearly that a connection is not equivalent to electricity access. A number of barriers remain which prevent consumers from using electricity in ways that promise to improve their health, livelihoods, and overall well-being. For many, the conditions of energy access fall short of SDG 7.
Over one billion people globally are now estimated to live in slums or informal settlements.1 This population is growing as conflicts, natural disasters, and climate change fuel further displacement from rural areas. In sub-Saharan Africa, somewhere from 50-60% of the urban population of 200 million lives in informal communities that face structural barriers to securing legal access to the electricity grid.
For residents of informal communities who cannot afford the connection fee or provide required tenancy documents (among other barriers), the only viable alternative is to connect informally through a local electrician. Though an informal connection provides a marginal level of access to the grid, it engenders new vulnerabilities. Electricians and landlords, acting as de facto electricity retailers, can set their tariffs, physically restrict the time of day during which power is available, or limit the number and type of appliances used. Periodic enforcement raids from local authorities can mean hefty fines or jail time for those found with illegal connections.
Despite the enormous scale of un and under-served informal urban communities worldwide – and accelerating urbanization rates – their access challenges have remained outside the mainstream view of the Sustainable Development Goal 7 community working to “ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.” A poor understanding of how people connect to the grid and the limitations and drivers involved in their decision-making hinders efforts to improve access. The following insights are based on preliminary work by Spotlight Kampala – a research initiative aiming to offer actionable insight into access challenges in informal communities in Kampala.
Accelerating the rate of renewable energy deployment in Small Island Developing States is critical to reduce dependence on expensive fossil fuel imports and meet emissions reductions goals. Though many islands have now introduced policy measures to encourage RE development, the existing literature focuses on qualitative recommendations and has not sought to quantitatively evaluate and compare the impacts of policy interventions in the Caribbean. After compiling the first systematic database of RE policies implemented in 31 Caribbean islands from 2000 to 2018, we conduct an econometric analysis of the effectiveness of the following five policy interventions in promoting the deployment of RE: investment incentives, tax incentives, feed-in tariffs, net- metering and net-billing programs, and regulatory restructuring to allow market entry by independent power producers. Using a fixed effects model to control for unit heterogeneities between islands, we find evidence that net-metering/net-billing programs are strongly and positively correlated with increases in installed capacity of renewable energy - particularly solar PV. These findings suggest that the RE transition in the Caribbean can be advanced through policies targeting the adoption of small-scale, distributed photovoltaics.
Spotlight Kampala is a multi-institutional research collaboration of universities and community advocates that aims to shed light on the inequities faced by informal urban communities in accessing and utilizing electricity. Our data provides important baseline statistics on metrics of access like access rates, affordability, supply reliability and quality as well as an understanding of how community members perceive and navigate barriers to access. We aim not only to provide summary statistics, but to ground these learnings in the daily lived experience of Kampala’s informal residents. Community participation is a core objective of the work, with community members involved in each step of research design, execution, and dissemination. The project also focuses heavily on working closely with local stakeholders like the Government of Uganda's Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development, the utility Umeme Limited, and community-based organization like ACTogether Uganda and the National Slum Dwellers Federation of Uganda.
For more information and contact with the project team, visit the Spotlight Kampala website.
New analysis from University of California, Berkeley researchers finds that China is the only nation on track to triple its renewable capacity by 2030, a key goal for limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Amid continuing geopolitical tensions, climate change remains a key area of collaboration between the United States and China. Ahead of last November’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), Presidents Biden and Xi reaffirmed their commitment to work jointly—and together with other countries—to address the climate crisis and limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Central to the agreement, now known as the "Sunnylands Statement,” is a commitment to supporting efforts to triple the global production of renewable energy by 2030. That goal, which is the only quantitative target in the agreement, was previously identified as a key target by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IREA) and agreed to by G20 leaders during their September 2023 meeting.
A study published today in Environmental Research Letters by UC Berkeley researchers finds that the global growth rate of renewable and low-carbon energy capacity is insufficient to meet this target. Using historical data from IRENA and the IEA, the authors project that China is by far the closest to triple its capacity by 2030, while the five remaining regions—the U.S., European Union, the African continent, Central and South America, and the rest of the world—will fall short.
“The climate crisis is now an emergency of inaction on a true energy transition,” said co-author Daniel Kammen, the James and Katherine Lau Distinguished Professor of Sustainability in the Energy and Resources Group (ERG), the Goldman School of Public Policy, and the Department of Nuclear Engineering. “While some specific policies and the actions of some nations show that a clean, green energy future can be achieved, we must be more systematic, holistic, and aggressive in our actions.”
China’s renewable energy capacity tripled during the last decade, a historic trend projected to continue through 2030. While developers of renewable energy projects in China may face difficulty securing financing and integrating their projects onto the grid, the country regularly surpasses its conservative targets and is more capable of leveraging other policies to facilitate necessary growth.
By comparison, the U.S. would need to significantly raise its renewable ambitions to achieve this target. The authors point to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which authorized $369 billion in new government spending on clean energy and climate mitigation over the next decade, as one successful policy intervention capable of bringing the U.S. closer to its target. While they estimate that IRA-linked renewable energy projects will increase the domestic renewable energy capacity by a factor of 2 or 3, the U.S. would need to more than quadruple current projections to meet its stated targets.
“It’s heartening to see the exponential deployment of the past decade, and 2023 saw by far the biggest gains yet,” said co-author Ari Ball-Burack, a PhD student in ERG. “Moving forward, the U.S. and China have a responsibility to concretely facilitate renewables deployment worldwide.”
Co-author Xi Xi, a graduate student in ERG, notes that the greatest challenge the U.S. and China face will be facilitating and supporting efforts toward tripling renewable energy capacity elsewhere. Renewable energy deployment and power sector expansion are crucial to Africa’s sustainable development goals, yet so much of the continent’s energy development has been historically under-invested. The IEA estimates that more than $200 billion per year of investment by 2030 is required to achieve key energy goals and facilitate a just and inclusive climate transition. Comparable levels of investment are also needed in Central and South America and across the rest of the world.
“The U.S. and China operate within a global context and must proactively acknowledge and incorporate global perspectives, particularly from the Global South, and actively contribute to climate mitigation efforts worldwide,” she said.
The researchers assert that although the two countries’ joint declaration sets an optimistic framework with which to build lasting international climate cooperation, much work remains to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. They propose four actionable steps to ensure the Sunnylands tripling commitment is met:
The commitments must transform into delivered funds, with actionable plans to assemble and distribute funds committed to addressing challenges of climate mitigation and adaptation.
Subnational and informal collaborations between the two countries and the rest of the world should accelerate technology and knowledge transfer to provide appropriate, effective, and efficient solutions.
The two countries should prioritize collaboration over competition. A competitive mindset could hinder the development of globalized supply chains, significantly increasing renewables costs.
Fostering an inclusive and collaborative climate discourse internationally is crucial for a speedy, just transition toward the net zero world and can facilitate and accelerate reforms in multilateral institutions to ensure just and viable institutional and financial mechanisms for renewables development in the Global South.
Leading Scientists Warn Energy Permitting Reform Act Spells Climate Disaster
WASHINGTON— In a letter to Congress, more than 100 scientists warn that the Energy Permitting Reform Act, or EPRA, will worsen the climate crisis and harm community health. The bill, introduced by Sens. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) and John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) in July, seeks to significantly expand fossil fuel extraction, infrastructure and exports within other provisions related to clean energy development.
The letter, co-signed by 118 scientific experts, says increases in carbon emissions from the bill’s fossil fuel buildout would undermine or even cancel out the potential emissions cuts from its renewable energy and transmission improvements. The letter urges Congress to oppose the bill.
“This bill is a Trojan horse for fossil fuel interests,” said Daniel Kammen, Ph.D., Lau Distinguished Professor of Sustainability at the University of California, Berkeley. “The potentially modest emissions reductions don’t come close to justifying the guaranteed explosion of emissions from fossil fuel exports. When we’ve got back-to-back superstorms battering the Southeast, we have to be clear about the guaranteed fossil fuel fiasco this bill represents.”
Global greenhouse gas emissions will increase as more U.S. fossil fuels are extracted and exported overseas, undercutting domestic emissions decreases in the power sector due to replacement by renewables.
“The climate crisis demands an immediate and rapid reduction in greenhouse emissions globally, so it is not enough to reduce emissions domestically while exporting our emissions footprint abroad,” the letter says.
By failing to account for the full lifecycle of emissions from fossil fuel exports, modeled results claiming emissions benefits of the EPRA are likewise misleading and undercut by planned and pending fossil fuel infrastructure projects. The United States is already the world’s top exporter of fossil gas and petroleum products, a trend that would be further locked in under the bill.
The EPRA would mandate additional fossil fuel leases on tens of millions of acres of public lands and hundreds of millions of acres of offshore waters. It would expedite approvals for LNG gas export projects and additional coal leasing on public lands with enormous consequences for the climate. For example, five major LNG projects that would likely proceed because of the bill would result in annual greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 165 coal-fired power plants.
The bill’s fossil fuel buildout would come at the expense of people’s health and welfare. Fossil fuel infrastructure, including additional LNG export facilities, would cost billions in additional health costs every year, with harms largely centered on Black and Latino communities in the U.S. Gulf Coast region.
In face of the recent record-setting heat wave that tested California's power grid, experts attributed the state's success to its commitment to renewable energy and called for collaboration with China to accelerate the path to a fully clean electricity grid.
California has set aggressive targets for renewable energy adoption, with state law requiring 90 percent of all retail electricity sales to come from renewable sources by 2035 and 100 percent by 2045. To meet those ambitious goals, the state is turning its attention to offshore wind power.
"In California, we have zero offshore wind today ... right now, China is far ahead of the US on the offshore wind industry," Daniel Kammen, a professor of energy at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of its Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, said.
California has designated two zones for offshore wind farms — one in Humboldt Bay in the north, and another in central California. "Offshore wind is exciting because it can be permitted more quickly and serves as a 'battery' for the grid," Kammen said.
Offshore wind can complement the production cycles of solar and on-land wind energy. That characteristic is particularly valuable, as solar production quickly diminishes when the sun sets, requiring system operators to replace those megawatts with other sources in real time to maintain grid stability.
It also offers flexibility in energy production, capable of generating electricity during peak demand and producing hydrogen or methanol during periods of low electricity prices. That flexibility presents huge opportunities to decarbonize sectors that have traditionally been difficult to transition to clean energy, Kammen said.
The state can directly apply some of China's practices, he said. "The best way to apply it is not just to read about it, but to actually get partners from China."
California has already taken such steps by inviting engineering groups from Norway. The state is also exploring opportunities in fuel cells, hydrogen production and other offshore renewable energy sources, such as tidal and wave power. Those areas promise rich opportunities for knowledge exchange and collaboration with Chinese partners, who have wide experience in the fields, Kammen added.
California and China have a history of partnership in developing clean energy technologies.
Kammen, however, stressed the need to accelerate the collaborations. He highlighted his own partnerships with research colleagues at Tsinghua University and North China Electric Power University, as well as with Chinese companies such as Geely.
"We want to build more of those teams so that we can move quickly when the politics let it happen," he said.
Gaining momentum
Despite tensions at the national level, locality cooperation between China and the United States has gained momentum recently.
"I think the conference may give you the best example," said Richard Dasher, director of the US-Asia Technology Management Center at Stanford University, referring to the 2024 Global Green Development Summit at his university on the weekend.
The summit, held by the Global Green Development Alliance, brought together climate and energy experts, as well as business leaders from both countries to discuss "energy transition and innovation for carbon neutrality".
Companies must provide solutions that are both economically viable and attractive to consumers, Dasher said.
Kammen emphasized the need for a combination of Silicon Valley's innovative mentality and the large-scale industrial capacity of entities such as China's State Grid and the State Grid Electric Vehicle Service.
He pointed to the productivity of new companies and university offshoots as evidence of the potential for collaborative innovation with Chinese companies.