Chris Wright, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick for energy secretary, tried to reassure Democrats at his confirmation hearing on Wednesday that he believed climate change was a “global challenge that we need to solve” and that he would support the development of all forms of energy, including wind and solar power.
The founder and chief executive of Liberty Energy, a fracking firm, Mr. Wright has been a longtime evangelist for fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal. He has shrugged off the risks of global warming, saying in 2023, “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either.” He has also criticized renewable energy sources like wind and solar power, calling them “costly and unreliable.”
But appearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Mr. Wright struck a more diplomatic tone. In his opening statement, he said his top priority was to “unleash” domestic energy production, including liquefied natural gas and nuclear power. But under pointed questioning from Senate Democrats, he suggested that he agreed with many of their priorities as well.
At one point, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, Democrat of Nevada, told Mr. Wright that “the conversation around energy should be balanced and not just focused on fossil fuels.”
“I agree entirely,” said Mr. Wright, who went on to talk about the importance of other less-polluting sources of energy like nuclear power, geothermal, hydropower, wind and solar power, saying he supported expanding them all.
In one particularly tense exchange, Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, brought up the catastrophic wildfires in Los Angeles. He pointed out that Mr. Wright had once written in a social media post that “The hype over wildfires is just hype to justify more impoverishment from bad government policies.”
“Do you still believe that wildfires are just hype?” Mr. Padilla asked angrily.
Mr. Wright said that “climate change is a real and global phenomenon” but added that he would not disavow his past writings.
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