Chris Wright, President-elect Donald Trump‘s choice to head the Department of Energy, will tell U.S. senators in his confirmation hearing on Wednesday that his first priority is expanding domestic energy production including liquefied natural gas and nuclear power, Reuters reports.
Wright believes fossil fuels are the key to ending world poverty, which he says is a greater problem than climate change’s distant threat, according to a report he wrote as CEO of oil field services company Liberty Energy.
Wright has supported some fossil fuel alternatives such as small nuclear power reactors, which are not yet commercially available, and geothermal power. But he has criticized solar and wind power as insufficient.
“Previous administrations have viewed energy as a liability instead of the immense national asset that it is,” Wright plans to tell the Senate energy committee, according to prepared remarks reviewed by Reuters. “To compete globally, we must expand energy production, including commercial nuclear and liquefied natural gas, and cut the cost of energy.”
