Before a crowd crowded by oil and gas leaders on Monday, Chris Wright, the new secretary in the United States of energy, delivered a scathing criticism of the energy policies of the Biden administration and efforts to combat climate change and promised a “180 degree pivot”.
Mr. Wright, a former hydraulic fracturing framework, has become the most powerful promoter of President Trump’s plans to extend American oil and gas production and to dismantle all federal policies aimed at limiting global warming.
“I wanted to play a role in the reversal of what I think I was a very bad orientation in energy policy,” said Wright by launching CERAWEEK by the World Conference of S&P in Houston, the largest annual gathering of the country of the energy industry. “The policy of the previous administration was focused on myopic level on climate change, with people as simply collateral damage.”
Mr. Wright’s speech was welcomed by enthusiastic applause.
It was quite different from a year ago, when Jennifer Granholm, the energy secretary during the Biden administration, said The same gathering as the transition to lower carbon energy such as wind, solar energy and batteries was unstoppable. “Even if we are the largest producer of oil and gas in the world,” said Ms. Granholm, “the expansion of American energy domination is striking.”
Mr. Wright, however, was disdainful of renewable energy, which, according to him, played only a small role in the energy mixture of the world. Natural gas currently provides 25% of raw energy worldwide, before being converted to electricity or in another use. Wind and solar only provide 3%, he said. He noted that gas also had a variety of other uses – it could be burned in the ovens to heat houses or used to make fertilizers or other chemicals – which were difficult to reproduce with other energy sources.
“Beyond the problems of obvious scale and costs, there is simply no physical means, solar energy and batteries could replace the myriad of natural gas uses,” said Wright.
Wright argued that there is a moral case for fossil fuels, saying that they are crucial to alleviate global poverty and that moving too quickly to reduce the risk of emissions that increases energy prices in the world. He denounced the efforts of the countries to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by 2050, calling this a “sinister objective”.
At a conference in Washington last week, Wright said that African countries needed more energy of all kinds to withdraw from poverty, including coal, the most polluting fossil fuel. “We have had years of Western countries by shamelessly saying not to develop coal, the coal is bad,” he said. “It’s just a nonsense.”
In Houston on Monday, other oil and gas leaders echoed Mr. Wright’s remarks, launching oil and gas as the best solution for poor people in developing countries around the world.
“There are billions of people on this planet who still live sad, short and difficult lives because they live in energy poverty, and it’s a shame,” said Michael Wirth, CEO of Chevron. “It should be unacceptable, but affordability had left the conversation, at least in the West.”
In recent years, a large part of the world has invested massively in renewable energies. Last year, the nations invested approximately 1.2 billion of dollars in wind, solar, batteries and electric networks, a little more than the 1.1 billion of dollars which they spent on the infrastructures of oil, gas and coal, according to to the International Energy Agency.
But Mr. Wright warned against a transition to renewable energies which, according to him, was likely to be expensive. “Everywhere, the penetration of wind and solar has increased significantly, prices have increased,” he said.
It is not always true. Texas has seen its electricity prices slightly decrease Over the past decade, wind and solar have developed quickly and now provide more than a quarter of the power of the state. The costs of wind turbines and solar panels have dropped rushed over the past decade. But some places, such as California and Germany, have seen the prices of electricity increase considerably at the same time as they have increased their use of renewable energy.
Some energy leaders at the conference were more optimistic about renewable energies. John Ketchum, the director general of Nextera Energy, the largest producer of wind and solar energy in the United States, said that renewable energies were essential to meet the growing demand for electricity in the United States in the coming years-especially since there was a large backlog for new turbines that burn natural gas.
Renewable energies “are cheaper and are available at the moment,” said Ketchum. “When you look at gas as a solution, as an example, to get your hands on a gas turbine and to build it on the market, you really look at 2030, or later.”
In his speech, Wright strongly criticized the Biden administration to slow down the growth of natural gas exports. Last year, the Department of Energy interrupted the approvals of new terminals that export liquefied natural gas, saying that it was concerned about environmental impacts and prices of the shipping of more gas abroad. Despite the break, the United States was still the world’s largest exporter of natural gas in 2024.
Wright signed the fourth export approval on Monday since Trump took office, extend an approval For the Delfin terminal off the coast of Louisiana. He said that the Biden Administration examination of gas exports had only found modest impacts on global emissions and American interior prices.
On the subject of climate change, Wright said he had not denied that the planet was heating up, calling a “climate realistic”.
But he added that the increase in greenhouse gas emissions for fossil fuels on fire – which have increased global average temperatures to their highest levels In at least 100,000 years – were a “side effect of the construction of the modern world”.
“We have indeed increased the global concentration of atmospheric CO2 of 50% in the process more than double the human life expectancy, by raising almost all the citizens of the world of poverty, by launching modern medicine,” he said. “Everything in life involves compromises.”
Mr. Wright did not register on the drawbacks of climate change, in particular the growing risks of heat waves, drought, floods and extinction of species. He also did not address the costs of adaptation to a warmer planet, which experts The estimate could reach thousands of dollars For developing countries only this decade.
Instead, Mr. Wright reprimanded Great Britain for having reduced his greenhouse gas emissions more quickly than any other rich country, saying that this had led key industries abroad.
“I find that it is sad and somewhat ironic that once powerful steel and petrochemical industries of the United Kingdom have been moved to Asia where the same products will be produced with higher greenhouse gas emissions, then loaded on a ship fed by diesel in the United Kingdom,” said Wright. “Net profit is an increase in prices and less jobs for British citizens, higher greenhouse gas emissions, and all this is qualified as climate policy.”
Wright said that he was not against low carbon energy and supports the advanced forms of nuclear energy and geothermal energy, which several startups in the United States are continuing.
But he said that the “all -to -coating” approach to the energy administration would probably not extend to wind farms, citing the opposition in certain communities. President Trump has been the subject of wind farms, wrongly affirming that they cause cancer. The administration has stopped approvals from wind farms on public lands and in federal waters and threatened to block projects on private land.
“The wind was distinguished because it had a singularly mediocre assessment to increase prices and obtain an increasing indignation from citizens, whether you are a farm or you are in a coastal community,” said Wright. “So the wind is a bit of a different case.”
Trump administration policies are not uniformly popular among oil and gas producers. Many companies have warned that Mr. Trump’s prices on steel and aluminum could increase the prices of essential materials such as pipes used to line new wells, while the constant threat of Canadian oil prices could increase the prices of refineries in the Midwest.
Wright especially bypassing questions about the prices, saying that “it is very early” and stressing that inflation was low during Mr. Trump’s first term.
Ivan Penn Contributed reports
