Trump Energy Nominee in Non-Psycopath Climate Shocker

Not gonna lie. It’s been pretty fracking grim these past few weeks as we slouch towards January 20th for a new Dark MAGA presidency to be born.

If you care about climate, climate solutions, energy, and the welfare of future generations - which is to say you’re part of the sentient not-completely-evil majority of people in most countries - four years of President Felon “Windmills Cause Cancer and Kill Whales” von Rapey, with his crew of anti-vax, climate-denying, Christofascist ghouls, is not something you’re looking forward to.

But. And I’m not saying this is cause for optimism compared to where we might have landed had the US election gone a different way. But…I’ve watched the three hours of confirmation hearing for Energy Secretary nominee Chris Wright. And…it could have been worse? Actually it could have been a lot — A LOT — worse.

The US Department of Energy [DoE] was established when the late President Jimmy Carter signed it into existence in 1977 as a better-late-than-never response to the oil shocks of the 1970s. It has waxed and waned in importance over the years since, but under the until-Monday-current US administration it has become THE focal point for climate policy implementation when it comes to the Inflation Reduction Act and related 2022 laws designed to accelerate development in the US of renewables, batteries, EVs, critical minerals, electrified and re-shored industry, and a bunch more quite nice things.

Particularly important has been DoE’s Loan Programs Office under Jigar Shah, as a central hub for taking already de-risked clean energy technologies and providing the sort of support that makes startups and projects in CDR, critical minerals processing, grid tech, and more (even the dread Hydrogen) more attractive for private capital to invest in.

So when Chris Wright, CEO of America’s 2nd-largest fracking oil field services business - much of which was spun out of Schlumberger in 2020, got the nod there was a sense of dread amongst clean energy entrepreneurs and investors and much toadying by banks and investors thinking this meant “drill baby drill” all the way down and f*ck all those tree-hugging solar and wind people.

As Senator John Hickenlooper of Colorado said during the hearing yesterday, Wright is “ an unrestrained enthusiast for fossil fuels in almost every regard” - which might confirm your biggest fears.

And the hearing - as should have surprised no one but always does somehow - was disrupted several times, from the jump during his opening statement, by climate protestors¹. In particular, their objections to an oil exec taking this job mentioned the climate-change-supercharged Los Angeles fires still raging out of control after killing more than 24 people so far, destroying 12,000 structures, and causing a minimum of $250 BILLION in economic losses, and counting. The Sunrise Movement helpfully provided a montage:

Who is this Fracker Chris Wright then?

It’s a quaint tradition that home-state Senators are asked to introduce a Cabinet nominee. Wright grew up in Colorado, that’s where Liberty Energy is based, and Hickenlooper was pretty open that despite disagreeing with Wright on a lot of things, he’s not a complete nutjob. After confirming Wright’s fossil-fuel-advocate status he continued:

 “…but he studied nuclear. He started out at University of Colorado, but somehow he ended up at MIT, got a master's, uh, his first years working were in solar, has experience in wind, is a practitioner and key innovator around geothermal, and the incredible potential that we have in geothermal.

He is a scientist who is open to discussion, a successful entrepreneur and has that ability to assess what is possible and what isn't.

For the last 40 years I've been worried [about] and working to address climate change and I worry about the acceleration of the feedback loops.

It could make what we saw in in Los Angeles over the past couple of weeks a grim foreshadowing of other events that could come. But I think that what we're looking at now is the need for a comprehensive approach to energy…

Chris has spent a lot of time looking at poverty, not just in this country, but around the world and how energy affects that, and how it affects the health of people in different countries.

I look forward to continuing the robust discussions. Uh, and I'm not gonna hold back.

And I know that he won't hold back either. And I think that's part of the key of a democracy is to be able to sit down and really thrash out your beliefs and what the facts are and be able to measure them. I think we both learned and evolved over the years on a, a number of issues and, and I have a high optimism we can work together.”

Did Wright live up to this optimistic take during his testimony?

Well - and this would not have been a given for a Trump nominee - he said he acknowledges climate change as a, and potentially the, global challenge.

On the other hand, his answers to Senator Padilla of California, defending previous social media squawks downplaying wildfires as “hype”, were stomach-turning.

And if Hawaii’s Mazie Hirono has tapes of the Mar-a-Lago fundraiser Wright attended last year, and those tapes show he was in the room when Donald Trump allegedly asked oil and gas execs for $1 billion in campaign money in exchange for whatever the frack they want, that might be a perjury problem for someone who testified under oath.

And finally it does sound like the “squirrel” mode of governance might include not just Peter Thiel’s favourite show trial targets revealed in the Financial Times² but Jigar as well, this was not super-encouraging:

But…nevertheless we persist and bring you this no-BS, extended supercut of hearing highlights that isn’t the whole 3-hour shebang but tries to keep the questions and answers in their actual context instead of just the McNuggets. Because you might feel your blood pressure tick down at some points (and probably raised in others).

Short version: if you’re in geothermal, grid modernisation, battery storage, new nuclear, and a few other non-fossil areas, a Wright DoE Sec isn’t going to be as bad as you might have feared on 6th November. We’ll spend a bit of time in the highlights on geothermal, for a couple of reasons:

• There’s actually a pretty clear transferrable skill base between fracking (what Wright’s company does) and enhanced geothermal emerging tech - drilling horizontally may turn out to be a pretty neat trick for more than enhanced oil recovery.

• Sen. Mike Lee of Utah (R), chairman of the committee, is a big fan of geothermal, which comes up. As you can see in the clip below Sen. Lee has decided it’s a “Puff the Magic Dragon”³ energy source. Worth noting that Sen. Lee is a practicing Mormon, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has some views on ‘puff’⁴ that make the reference a bit surprising.

• Wright isn’t just a geothermal enthusiast. He’s got ties to Fervo Energy, which like his ties to other energy companies including startups working on Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) he - and given the incoming president this was not a given - pledged to sever all financial interests with companies that might benefit from his time in office:

Here’s a short clip with part of what Wright had to say when asked about grid:

And while it’s clear Wright is - as expected - an “energy abundance” or “energy dominance” guy, on the evidence of this hearing it could have been an awful lot worse. Later today there are hearings for billionaire Doug Burgum at Interior Secretary (which controls a huge amount of US federal land and related mineral rights) and EPA administrator nominee Lee Zeldin (a former Congressman who used to represent the district I grew up in on Long Island and seems comparatively like a chancer and grifter).

Good luck America!

The Devil Has the Best Tunes

We like picking outro tunes. We also like suggestions for future ones. Gizza suggestion. Gwan - you will you will you will.

1. When I spoke with friend-of-the-show Tadzio Müller this week he cast doubt on the strategic wisdom of protestors trying to shut down the Alternativ für Deutschland party conference in Riesa, Saxony. If the party is polling at 25%, it’s a stretch to say that deplatforming them is a good look. Ban them as a party by all means, and purveyors of punch-a-Nazi T-shirts will do a good trade this winter across the West, but this is not that.

By the same token, this hearing was actually a mature and sensible conversation in most respects about what to do going forward about energy and climate. Much better than I would have hoped. Trying to shut down the very process of deliberation about Wright as a nominee - as opposed to clearly unqualified batshit crazy nominees like Tulsi Gabbard or Pete Hegseth or RFK Jr just feels like missing the point.

I’m sure I’ll take some stick for saying so but feck it. I learned a lot from the back-and-forth at the hearing about what the next four years might look like in terms of energy investments that the US government won’t be hostile towards, and this is the way the public gets that evidence - not just a few who can make their decisions based solely on privileged information gleaned behind closed doors.

2. For an utterly brilliant and terrifying deconstruction of whatever Straussian stuff Thiel was up to in that missive, we can only heartily recommend John Ganz’s essay:

Reading Thiel's Op-Ed

3. For the record, the writer of that song went to his grave arguing that PTMD was in no way a song about drugs.

4. And coffee, tea, etc