Chris Wright, a Colorado CEO, was confirmed on Monday by the US Senate with A. Voting from 59 to 38 To become the next Energy Minister.
The Right nomination session, which was held last month before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, was a relatively friendly relationship. Although there is an interruption in the sunrise movement Demonstrators and Hot exchange With the presence of Senator California Alex Badilla on the previous comments of Wright that rejects the relationship between climate change and forest fires, Wright was not subject to the controversial interrogation that some President Donald Trump is the other Cabinet candidates I faced. Senator John Heikinlobob, a democratic, as a personal friend, and four Democrats voted for the committee to confirm.
While acknowledged that “climate change is a real and global phenomenon,” Wright also insisted that “there is no dirty energy and clean energy; all the energy is different and it has all different bodies. The world of innovation and technology breakthroughs, “and” building things in America again and removing the barriers that prevent progress. ” He pressed the details of politics by the committee members, and expressed his support for the expansion of nuclear energy, renewable energy sources, and liquefied natural gas, and said that he believed that the transportation system in the country should be expanded and that it should be given priority in future allowances.
Part of the reason why Wright’s friend was the most coherent version, albeit related, from “abundance of energy” on how to increase the local energy production of all forms – including fossil fuels – can enable the United States to address what is suitable for the climate crisis. The Vision Wright has gave a wide interference with a set of ideas that have gained importance among the intellectuals of energy policies on both parties – as well as in some sectors of climate movement that see an opportunity to allow transportation reforms and nuclear subsidies as a file A reasonable comparison To increase oil and gas production.
“I love your focus on abundance,” said Senator Louisiana Bill Cassidy-a Republican and a major sponsor for a draft law on import tax from intensive carbon goods-on Wright. The Republican President of the Committee, Mike Lee, and a member of the Democratic Classification, Martin Heinrich, asked Wright to describe how he would enhance the abundance of energy.
“The term” power of energy “is definitely a moment. “I have heard that they are used in many different contexts by many different people who come to this from different ideological corners.”
But what exactly does it mean?
Alex Trimbeth, deputy director of the Institute of Horrents – Climate Research Tank, which may be linked to its terminology, and a long -term evidence of the environmental movement – said that the basic idea of its organization is that “technology and abundant energy can help solve environmental problems, not only causing them.”
Perhaps the most obvious example is the hope that the nuclear energy will help accelerate our transmission from fossil fuels without sacrificing reliability, but self -described “environmental modernity” such as TrembATH’s dream of a wide range of possibilities that will be opened with sufficient energy.
“If you already have abundant solar or nuclear, the intense industrial processes such as desalination or internal agriculture begin to look more economical,” said Trimmith. “You can imagine seawater that replaces the desalination of identity and not having to drain the rivers and layers of groundwater.
To Auth, the term not only includes future hopes in opening miracle solutions by increasing electricity supplies; It is of immediate importance to hundreds of millions in the world who lack access to electricity, and the largest numbers that are hindered by the development of their countries due to the insufficient energy infrastructure.
“Outside the United States and Europe, throughout Africa and Southeast Asia, we need more power,” said ATH. “People not only need basic electricity services, but they need to build competitive economies, and they need to build a modern industry, and they need to build manufacturing facilities, and to be climatic flexible. They need electricity to air conditioning and all types of infrastructure. So I think the abundance, For me, it means that we need to be very ambitious in the range and speed in which we are trying to build an energy infrastructure around the world.
In the Right confirmation session, he spoke about the tragedy of energy poverty and the need for electrification in developing countries. He said: “I think we will see more powerful energy resources that come out of our country and hope that it will leave the world so that everyone can live a life as we do.”
“I appreciate Chris Wright, drawing attention to the fact that, here in the United States, we take an emotional matter from him that the lights will continue and that we have refrigerators and TVs, and this is simply not the reality of millions and millions of people,” said Approval, from the energy center.
But Wright’s commitment to the abundance of energy stood in a noticeable contradiction with the agenda, AugUted in the 2025 projectIt seems that this is based on Trump’s executive orders so far, which makes it very difficult to see to act according to his declared priorities of increasing energy supplies and financing for research and development.
Trump began his second administration with the announcement of “Energy Emergency” – but he followed that One -sided freezing All the new window of wind energy in land and federal waters. Then last week the president tried to freeze many scholarships and federal loans – something that threw the government in chaos and his current situation is stabbed. The freezing of foreign aid from Trump has already wandered the administration’s ability to reach a vision of Wright for help in the developing world: programs such as Power Africa, which directed the US Agency for International Development to end the energy poverty in Africa, and according to the approval, may be, it may be I have already stopped.
The president’s movements raises the issue of how Wright, as Minister of Energy, will ensure “energy abundance” if his boss is not on board.
“From the first day, the Trump administration has been dispelled by any excuse to support the abundance of energy,” said Tyler Norris, a PhD fellow at Duke University and a former special consultant at the Ministry of Energy. “Instead, it takes an unprecedented step from taking advantage of the emergency powers in the executive authority to prevent the energy resources that the president hates. To the extent that Mr. Wright prefers the abundance of energy, he faces a highly declining battle against the White House, which is controlled by ideology who focuses more on Back to the tribal energy instead of solving the problems of the real world.
“You see shades of the abundance of energy on both sides,” said Trebath. On the Republican side, he pointed to the emergence of the term “energy dominance”, which he said was “really revolving around the idea of an abundance of energy.” Among the Democrats, the abundance of energy can be practically described as a directive vision for the last four years of US energy policy, which has brought together huge federal investments in green technology with record levels of oil and gas production. “The Biden Administration and Democrats in the Ministry of Energy and Congress had their own vision of the abundance that clarified in the law to reduce inflation, the investment and jobs law in infrastructure,” said Tremat.
But both sides have angles of resistance to the energy consolidation agenda, for the motives ranging from conservation by environmental groups to benefit from the fossil fuel companies that see renewable energy sources pose an existential threat. Although the liberals and the regulations that they pass through are often depicted as a wicker in an endless winning of the industrial age in the United States, the new administration shows its ability to use the same tools until its ends.
“A very size argument can be made that Trump’s executive orders so far are not in the spirit of energy or energy dominance.” These are the procedural procedures that Republicans complain of drilling for oil and gas, but when the shoe is happy on the other foot they arrest the law of politics National environment against projects they do not like. “
Wright’s ability to increase energy production will falter through the fact that the Ministry of Energy simply does not directly control the construction or allow most of the new energy infrastructure, or write the rules that govern it. The most fundamental part of the administration’s budget is spent on maintaining a nuclear weapons arsenal. The tools of the influence of the Ministry of Energy on the country’s electricity networks are the strips of investments in the new technologies and support for project developers – and even in those areas, money must be approved by Congress, and politically speaking, ultimately subject to the president’s work schedule.
“The Environmental Protection Agency has actually more saying about the organization of energy infrastructure more than the Ministry of Energy.” Tremith said: “With regard to building and organizing the infrastructure and allowing it, it largely deviates from the specialty of energy. Likewise, Congress is responsible for what is spent in an antelope. “
There are some squares that Wright will have the ability to enact his ambitions, such as LNG stations, which raised Trump as a stop for the Biden administration and permits for the Ministry of Energy issues. Another is to buy and sell oil from strategic petroleum reserves in order to stabilize energy prices, a practice used by the Energy Minister in Biden, Jennifer Granholm. Finally, the Ministry of Energy controls the Energy Finance Agency once called the loan programs office, which It came in the eye of the audience As the most prominent climate investment vehicle in the Biden Administration under the leadership of Jighar Shah, a former solar developer He loves to talk About the “abundance of energy” (the phrase appears in X Bio).
One forms of Wright’s intentions arose during confirmation sessions, when Senator Mike Lee asked him to commit to the immediate commentary of the issuance of the new loan programs office on the basis of the report of the Inspector General appointed by Trump claiming that the interests of interest in contracts were granted. Wright said he was aware of the report, but he did not commit to hanging new loans.
However, the question – Wright’s authority to determine how to move forward – has been replaced soon by freezing management financing. Currently, the office is actually closed.
