Trump’s Energy Secretary Nominee Rejects Terms ‘Clean’ and ‘Dirty’ energy

US President-elect Donald Trump has announced the nomination of Chris Wright, CEO of Liberty Energy, as his energy secretary.

“As Secretary of Energy, Chris will be a key leader who will drive innovation, cut red tape, and usher in a new golden age of American prosperity and world peace,” Trump said in a statement.

Wright will also be a member of the new National Energy Council, which the president-elect announced on Friday. The council’s mission will be to oversee the path toward US energy dominance. Wright’s nomination has received support from oil companies, according to the Financial Times.

Wright runs Liberty Energy, which he founded in 2011 and specializes in hydraulic fracturing, a polluting method of extracting hydrocarbons.

In a post on his LinkedIn account a year ago, the climate change skeptic Wright said, “There is no climate crisis, and we are not in the midst of an energy transition.” He also criticized the term carbon pollution, because all life depends on carbon dioxide, and rejected the terms clean energy and dirty energy, considering that “all energy sources have positive and negative impacts on the world.” Trump added in his statement that the Liberty Energy CEO was “a pioneering energy entrepreneur who has worked in nuclear, solar, geothermal, and oil and gas.” The president-elect continued: “Most importantly, Chris was one of the pioneers who helped launch the American shale revolution that fueled American energy independence and transformed global energy markets and geopolitics.”

The names of future ministers and officials in the new Trump administration began to be revealed just one week after the election, and the names continued to be announced this week. The names of these figures are controversial, including Fox News host Pete Hegseth, who was chosen to head the defense ministry and was accused of committing an assault in 2017; Robert F. Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, who was chosen to head the health ministry; Tulsi Gabbard, a defector from the Democratic Party and accused of taking pro-Russian positions, who was chosen to head the US National Intelligence Directorate; and Matt Gates, who was chosen to head the justice ministry and has no experience in this field and is suspected of having relations with an underage girl. As for Elon Musk, he will chair the government efficiency committee. The issue of hydraulic fracturing was a major issue in the election campaign, and Trump accused his rival Kamala Harris of wanting to ban this process, which the Democratic candidate denied.