By Anastasiia @Adobe Stock
There’s a New Evangelist in Town
He goes by the name of Chris Wright. Mr. Wright has an unexpected, compelling message: “If you care about this big, beautiful Earth, drill America.”
“The energy required to produce an EV is about double that of building an internal combustion engine,” as Mr. Wright expounds below.
Donald Trump’s new energy secretary—is a form of energy himself, observes Kimberley Strassel in the WSJ. An enthusiastic Mr. Wright will oversee the potential for commercial nuclear fission. The former CEO of Liberty Energy is fiery about everything from the national lab “gems” he’ll oversee to the potential for commercial nuclear fission. Wright wants to “kilojoules” into upending the debate: his goal is to fundamentally change the public perception of energy:
Wright uses that bully pulpit to end talk of “good” versus “evil” energy, to end the notion that “more energy in America means more climate damage—those things just aren’t logical.”
Doing Things That Don’t Work
What Mr. Wright does not do is use religion to persuade listeners. He goes for a more lucid approach by citing irrefutable facts.
If the world is failing to make meaningful emissions reductions, it’s because it keeps pretending it can reduce demand for hydrocarbons rather than focusing on using smarter ones or nuclear power. Demand is only rising, and pushing production out of the U.S. won’t change that. The problem with “politics” in energy, he says, is that “people do things that sound good and feel good and benefit important constituencies”—but don’t work.
Alright, Kin Strassel, so far so good. But America has already spent trillions on solar and wind subsidies, both of which supply only a tiny fraction of the electricity market and even less in the global market. What’s Mr. Wright’s plan for this expensive political conundrum?
A good place to begin, advises KS, is to not get Chris Wright started on EVs.
As Mr. Wright noted earlier, the energy required to produce an EV is about double that of building an internal combustion engine. EVs displace gasoline demand, replacing it with diesel demand (for the mining and ships required for EV materials), coal demand (to run Asian factories that produce EVs) and electrical demand (charging, fueled primarily by hydrocarbons). If an EV driver feels sanctimonious, it’s only because politicians spared him knowledge of his heaving carbon footprint.
The science of our changing climate fascinates the zealous new energy secretary. A smarter, proven road is the U.S. switching from coal to natural gas in “electricity production, which reduced emissions even as it kept energy affordable.”
Those points got lost when the left abandoned natural gas as a “bridge fuel” in favor of energy Malthusianism. Mr. Wright wants to revitalize and turbocharge that approach, “unleash American energy at home and abroad,” cement our energy dominance and fuel the world with cleaner U.S. products.
With the new council of “energy dominance,” Mr. Wright will be working alongside Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to enhance a formula for big US job creation along with “a more stable world.” They will coordinate efforts across government: significant new permitting., drilling, liquefied natural gas exports, pipelines, a real commitment to a nuclear revival, learning barriers to new technologies.
Nuclear power, notes Chris Wright, has an enormous role to play in the nearly “half of global energy that goes to manufacturing, including the process heat needed to make infinite numbers of products.”
“To really change the energy system, you have to impact the biggest uses of energy.” This doesn’t involve windmills,” Wright forthrightly notes to KS.
Chris Wright is hardly a corporate shrill for “Big Oil.” He wrote a book on one of his passions, “to better human lives through energy.”
Its main argument: Hydrocarbons are essential to improving the wealth and health of the seven billion people who aspire to be among today’s more energy-privileged.
Even in the U.S., he notes, 10% of “Americans got a disconnect notice to their utilities in the last 12 months.”
While climate is a challenge, it is far from the biggest threat to life. As a philanthropist, he launched a foundation dedicated to getting clean propane to the two billion people who still cook daily meals indoors over charcoal or dung, leading to millions of pollution deaths.
Mr. Wright’s first task is to reorient an Energy Department that, as Mr. Wright notes, was run by an administration (Joe Biden’s) that “thought energy was a negative liability” and—as (Wright) put it in a speech to department employees on Wednesday—largely existed to “stop things from happening.”
Wright wants to get the department out of politics (including politically driven loans) and back into enabling “energy sources that are affordable, that are reliable, that are secure, and that make people’s lives better.”
An Energy Department that wants more energy? Reflecting on this, KS celebrates, “What a refreshing thought. “
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