Christopher Allen Wright is an American businessman and government official serving as the 17th United States secretary of energy since February 2025. Before leading the U.S. Department of Energy, Wright served as the CEO of Liberty Energy, North America's second largest hydraulic fracturing company, and served on the boards of Oklo Inc., a nuclear technology company, and EMX Royalty Corp., a Canadian mineral rights and mining rights royalty payment company.

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Christopher Allen Wright (born January 15, 1965) is an American businessman and government official serving as the 17th United States secretary of energy since February 2025. Before leading the U.S. Department of Energy, Wright served as the CEO of Liberty Energy, North America's second largest hydraulic fracturing company, and served on the boards of Oklo Inc., a nuclear technology company, and EMX Royalty Corp., a Canadian mineral rights and mining rights royalty payment company.\n

On November 16, 2024, President-elect Donald Trump announced Wright as his nominee for U.S. secretary of energy. Wright's nomination was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on February 3, 2025, with a 59–38 vote. Wright was sworn in as the secretary of energy on February 3, 2025. As secretary, he has overseen rollbacks of climate change mitigation policies and promoted fossil fuel use.\n

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Early life and education

Chris Wright was born on January 15, 1965, in a family of Scottish descent and grew up in Colorado. He earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and a master's degree in electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was a graduate student in electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and at MIT.\n

Career

Private sector

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In 1992, Wright founded Pinnacle Technologies, a company involved in commercial shale gas production through fracking and served as its CEO until 2006. He was also chairman of Stroud Energy, another company involved in the production of shale gas, before he sold the company in 2006. In 2011, he founded Liberty Energy, then known as Liberty Oilfield Services. As of February 2023, the company was valued at $2.8 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. As the CEO of Liberty Energy, Wright earned $5.6 million in 2023.\n

In 2019 Wright drank fracking fluid to demonstrate that it was not dangerous, and Liberty Energy promoted its \"greener selections\" for chemical additives. In a video posted to LinkedIn in January 2023, he said, \"There is no climate crisis and we're not in the midst of an energy transition either\". He claimed that the climate movement around the world was \"collapsing under its own weight\". He also said that the term \"carbon pollution\" is misleading.\n

Wright served on the board of directors for the Denver Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City from January 2020 to April 2024.\n

In April 2024, Wright testified on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's climate change rule from March 2024, which requires the disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions, physical risks to climate change and transition risks. He called the rule unlawful \"climate regulation promulgated under the Commission's seal\", said that companies' risks associated with extreme weather were decreasing, and that millions of lives had been saved by reducing cold-related deaths.\n

Wright has been on the board of directors of Oklo Inc., a company that designs small fast-neutron reactors, and EMX Royalty Corp., a Canadian royalty payment company for mineral rights and mining rights. On 6 February, 2025, three days after Wright's confirmation to the role of secretary of energy, Oklo announced that Wright had stepped down from the board. \t\n

Secretary of Energy

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On November 15, 2024, the Financial Times reported that Wright was the most likely candidate for United States Secretary of Energy in Donald Trump's second presidency. He had donated $228,390 to Trump's joint fundraising committee in 2024. Republican senator John Barrasso praised Wright as an \"energy innovator.\" He received several endorsements from Trump allies and oil-industry interests, including American Energy Alliance president Thomas Pyle and Continental Resources chairman Harold Hamm. The Union of Concerned Scientists said Wright \"deliberately misrepresents climate data and research.\"\n

On November 16, 2024, President-elect Donald Trump announced his nomination of Wright to serve as U.S. secretary of energy as well as a member of the National Energy Council following confirmation by the Senate. The United States Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources voted 15–6 in favor of Wright's nomination on January 23, and the U.S. Senate confirmed Wright in a 59–38 vote on February 3, 2025; he was sworn in later the same day.\n

As secretary of energy, Wright has supported the rollback of measures to combat climate change and overseen the crafting of a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) report questioning mainstream climate science. In an interview with Kimberley Strassel, Wright said that \"too little\" atmospheric carbon dioxide is a \"bigger risk\" than rising CO2 levels. He argued that climate change is not impacting extreme weather events, contradicting the scientific consensus on the issue. Wright's statements and the DOE report have been widely condemned by the scientific community for misrepresentations and cherry-picked data.\n

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In September 2025, Wright wrote on social media platform X that \"Even if you wrapped the entire planet in a solar panel, you would only be producing 20% of global energy. One of the biggest mistakes politicians can make is equating the ELECTRICITY with ENERGY!\" The statement was characterized by New Scientist as \"wildly and embarrassingly wrong\", as utilizing 0.3% of land area for the generation of solar power would provide 100% of global energy demand; while the Department of Energy website notes that \"The amount of sunlight that strikes the Earth's surface in an hour and a half is enough to handle the entire world's energy consumption for a full year\".\n

Wright has been critical of plans to achieve net-zero emissions globally by 2050, saying, \"Net zero 2050 is just a colossal train wreck … It’s just a monstrous human impoverishment program and of course there is no way it is going to happen.\" He argued that the increase in natural gas production was the \"largest driver of decarbonization\" in the United States.\n

Wright criticized the European Green Deal and advocated for oil and gas exports from the United States to the EU. He also criticized net-zero transition in the United Kingdom. On September 12, 2025, Wright urged EU member states to stop buying Russian gas and not finance Russia's invasion of Ukraine, saying: \"The more we can strangle Russia’s ability to fund this murderous war, the better for all of us.\"\n

In October 2025, Wright directed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to a \"file joint, co-located load and generation interconnection requests\", and appealed to the White House to accelerate reviews required to connect AI to power grids. In August of 2025, he was responsible for the release of two documents that were disputed by scientists.\n

In October 2025, Wright cancelled 321 clean energy grants in states that voted for Kamala Harris, totaling $7.56 billion. Wright stated in a June 2026 congressional hearing that the cancellations were not politically motivated. Administration officials stated in a July 2026 court filing that the cancellations were not \"based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction or performance-based factor\" and were \"based solely on the political identity\" of the grant recipient's state.\n

In November 2025, Wright stated that nuclear power would receive the largest amount of loans from the Department of Energy as part of the second Trump administration’s energy policy.\n

In February 2026, he paid a three-day visit to Venezuela and discussed cooperation in the energy sector with the country's acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, calling for increased investment in Venezuela's oil extraction.\n

On March 10, 2026, Wright incorrectly claimed, in a social media post, that the US Navy had escorted an oil tanker through the Strait of Hormuz. Oil prices fell below $80 a barrel on the announcement. The post was later deleted, and prices rose again.\n

During his tenure as Secretary of Energy, Wright has forced several coal plants to stay operational, arguing they were needed for grid reliability despite regional grid operators permitting them to close. A court struck down Wright's use of emergency powers in non-emergency situations in September 2026. The plan was proposed by coal industry lobbyists.\n

He co-signed on July 22, 2026 in Washington, DC the landmark Section 123 civil nuclear cooperation agreement alongside Saudi Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman to advance civil nuclear development and bilateral safeguards.\n

Personal life

Wright and his wife, Liz, live in Englewood, Colorado.\n

References

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External links

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Appearances on C-SPAN

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Chris Wright

Broadcast History