Christopher Allen Wright

Christopher Allen Wright (born January 15, 1965, New Jersey, United States) is an American politician, businessman, and engineer who serves as the secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy (2025– ) in the second administration of Pres. Donald J. Trump. Wright was confirmed as U.S. energy secretary on February 3, 2025, by a vote of 59–38 in the U.S. Senate. Prior to entering politics, he had a decades-long career in the fossil-fuel business, founding two companies. Wright has been an outspoken critic of policies aimed at addressing climate change and expanding the use of renewable energy. During his tenure at the U.S. Department of Energy, he has prioritized the development of fossil fuels and nuclear, geothermal, and hydroelectric power in accordance with Trump’s desire to “unleash” American energy.

Early life

Wright, who was the youngest of four children, was born in New Jersey and raised in Denver after he and his family moved there when he was six years old. Wright attended public elementary and high school in Denver before studying mechanical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Wright received a Bachelor of Science degree from MIT in 1985. He also did graduate work in electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and MIT between 1985 and 1987, though he did not graduate.

Career

After working as a design engineer and a project manager, Wright founded Pinnacle Technologies in 1992, which developed mapping and modeling products to extract and produce shale gas (natural gas deposits occurring in sheetlike formations of shale) through fracking (or hydraulic fracturing, the injection of a fluid into an underground rock formation to open fissures that releases trapped gas or crude oil). Wright served as the company’s CEO until 2006. During his tenure at Pinnacle Technologies, he founded Stroud Energy, a company focused on the production of shale gas, in 2000 and served as its chair until 2006. Between 2006 and 2011 Wright served as the director of several foundations, including the Foundation for Teaching Economics (2006–10), the Yellowstone Club Community Foundation (2009–17), and the Pacific Research Institute (2009– ).

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Wright founded Liberty Energy, an oilfield services company, in 2011, where he served as chief executive and chair until his confirmation as U.S. energy secretary in 2025. Although Liberty Energy’s primary business was geared toward petroleum and natural gas, it expanded into providing geothermal technology services in 2022. Wright claimed in 2024 that Liberty Energy, valued at $3 billion, was responsible for nearly 10 percent of total energy production in the United States, including hydraulic fracturing operations that spanned 20 percent of the country’s onshore wells. He earned $5.6 million in 2023 as the company’s CEO. As of November 2024, shortly before taking over at the Department of Energy in early 2025, Wright’s net worth was estimated at $171 million.

A self-described “energy nerd turned entrepreneur,” Wright has been a staunch defender of fossil-fuel use. He has written extensively and given talks on the need for more oil and gas production to lift people out of poverty. He has stood out among oil and gas executives for his freewheeling style and for a 2019 public relations stunt in which he drank fracking fluid on camera to demonstrate that it was not dangerous. Wright equates climate-change activists to alarmists and has likened efforts by Democrats to combat global warming to Soviet-style communism. Wright attracted attention in January 2023 through a LinkedIn video in which he said, “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either.” The Microsoft-owned social media site for professionals initially took down his post, arguing that it violated the company’s misinformation policy, but it was later restored.

Actions as secretary of energy

Wright’s perspectives about the importance of fossil fuels and his deep expertise as a decades-long energy executive made him the right fit to lead the U.S. Department of Energy under Trump, who vowed to reverse climate-friendly policies under the administration of Pres. Joe Biden. During his confirmation hearing, Wright did not deny that climate change was real, but he took a nuanced approach in explaining it. He said, “Energy is critical to human lives. Climate change is a global challenge that we need to solve, and the trade-offs between those two are the decisions politicians make, and they’re the decisions that’ll impact the future of our world and the quality of life.” During his first months as U.S. energy secretary, Wright made similar comments at the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Texas, noting that climate change “is a side effect of building the modern world.” He also previously described the goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 as “a sinister goal.”

Budget, regulatory, and staffing cuts

Wright’s tenure at the Department of Energy has been marked by controversy. During his first year Wright cut more than $11 billion in energy grants, including $7.6 billion in funding to several clean-energy projects that were part of former president Biden’s effort to decarbonize the U.S. economy. Department of Energy officials noted that the cuts were needed in order to save money for U.S. taxpayers and to support the Trump administration’s focus on the expansion of fossil-fuel development, which was initiated by the president signing an executive order declaring a national energy emergency on his first day of his second term. Canceled funding was accompanied by cuts to energy-efficiency regulations and the elimination of thousands of Energy Department staffing positions.

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