Before the crowds of oil and gas executives were crowded on Monday, Chris Wright, a new US Energy Secretary, made a terrible criticism of energy policy and the efforts of a bideling administration in the fight against climate change and promised a “180 -degree turning point”.
Mr. Wright, former Fracking CEO has become the strongest promoter of President Trump’s plans expand US oil and gas production and Limit almost every federal policy aimed at suppressing global warming.
“I wanted to play a role in a reversal of what I believe was a very bad direction in energy policy,” Mr. Wright said, while Ceraweek began by S&P Global Conference in Houston, the biggest annual gathering of the Energy Industry in the country. “The policy of the previous administration was myopically aimed at climate change, and people are simply collateral damage.”
Mr. Wright’s speech was greeted with enthusiastic applause.
It was completely different from a year ago, when Jennifer Granholm, Minister of Energy during the Bidan Administration, said The same set as the transition to a lower carbon form of energy such as wind, solar and battery was unstoppable. “Even as we are the biggest oil and gas producer in the world,” said Mrs. Granholm, “spreading American energy dominance on pure energy is striking.”
Mr. Wright, however, was rejected by renewable sources, which he said was playing only a small role in the world energy mix. Natural gas currently supplies 25 percent of raw energy globally, before turning into electricity or other use. The wind and solar energy supply only about 3 percent, he said. He noted that the gas also had various other purposes – it could be burned in the stove for the warmth of homes or used to make fertilizers or other chemicals – which was difficult to repeat with other energy sources.
“In addition to obvious problems with proportions and costs, there is simply no physical way in which the wind, solar and batteries could replace the myriad of use of natural gas,” said Mr. Wright.
Mr. Wright claimed there was a moral case for fossil fuels, saying that they are key to alleviating global poverty and that it moves too quickly to reduce emissions risks increase energy prices around the world. He denied the efforts of the countries to stop adding greenhouse gas to the atmosphere by 2050, calling it a “malicious goal”.
At a conference in Washington Last weekMr. Wright said that African countries need more energy of all kinds to get out of poverty, including coal, the most notual fossil fuel. “We had years of Western countries shamelessly saying they didn’t develop coal, coal is bad,” he said. “It’s just nonsense.”
In Houston on Monday, other oil and gas executives repeated Mr. Wright’s remarks, throwing oil and gas as the best solution for impoverished people in developing countries around the world.
“There are billions of people on this planet who continue to live a sad, short, difficult life because they live in energy poverty, which is a shame,” said Michael Wirth, CEO of Chevron. “It should be unacceptable, but accessibility left the conversation, at least in the west.”
In recent years, much of the world has greatly invest in renewable energy sources. Last year, the nations invested approximately $ 1.2 trillion in the wind, solar energy, batteries and electric networks, just over $ 1.1 trillion they spent on oil, gas and coal infrastructure, according to International Energy Agency.
But Mr. Wright warned about moving to renewable energy, which he said was likely to prove expensive. “The penetration of the wind and the solar has increased significantly everywhere, the prices have increased,” he said.
That is not always true. Texas saw that his electricity prices were slowly declining Over the past decades, how the wind and solar have grown and now supply more than one quarter of the state of the state. The cost of wind turbines and solar panels has suddenly fallen in the last decade. But some places, such as California and Germany, saw that electricity prices were significantly increased at the same time when they increased the use of renewable energy sources.
Some energy executives at the conference were more optimistic about renewable energy sources. John Ketchum, director of Nexter Energy, the largest wind and solar energy manufacturer in the United States, said that renewable sources are important to satisfy the increasing demand for electricity in the United States in the next few years – especially since there has been a large backlog for new turbines.
Renewable energy “is cheaper and is currently available,” said Mr. Ketchum. “When you look at the gas as a solution, as an example, to get to the gas turbine and actually build it throughout the market, you really look at 2030 or later.”
In his speech, Mr. Wright criticized the administration of Biden for slowing down the growth of natural gas exports. Last year’s energy department Pausated approval of new terminals This export -cited natural gas, saying that he is concerned about the environmental impact and the prices of more gas transfers abroad. Despite the break, the United States was still the world’s largest natural gas exporter in 2024.
On Monday, Mr. Wright signed the fourth approval of exports since Mr. Trump took over, An extension of approval For the dolphin terminal near the Louisiana coast. Said the Administration of Biden Gas export examination They discovered only modest influences on global shows and domestic US prices.
On the topic of climate change, Mr. Wright said he did not deny that the planet was warming up, calling himself a “climatic realist.”
But he added that the growing greenhouse gas emissions from the burning fossil fuels – which increased the global average temperature to their highest level In at least 100,000 years – They were a “side effect of building a modern world.”
“We really raised a global atmospheric concentration of CO2 by 50 percent in the process more than double the expectant life of human life, ejecting almost all worldwide citizens out of the poverty grinding, launching modern medicine,” he said. “Everything in life includes compromises.”
Mr. Wright did not linger on the disadvantages of climate change, which include growing risks of heat waves, drought, flooding and species extinction. He also did not deal with the cost of adjusting to the hot planet, which experts The estimate could reach trillion dollars Only for countries in the development of this decade.
Instead, Mr. Wright reprimanded Britain to reduce greenhouse gas emissions faster than any other rich country, saying that he had conducted key industry abroad.
“I consider it sad and a bit ironic that the once -powerful steel and petrochemical industry of the United Kingdom moved to Asia, where the same products will be produced with higher greenhouse gas emissions and then loaded on board with diesel power back to the United Kingdom,” said Mr. Wright. “The net result is higher prices and smaller jobs for the citizens of the UK, larger global greenhouse gas emissions, all of which calls climate policy.”
Mr. Wright said it was not against low carbon energy and supports advanced forms nuclear energy and geothermal powerwhich persecute more startups in the United States.
But he said that the approach of administration “comprehensive” energy is unlikely to expand to the wind farms, citing opposition in some communities. President Trump opposed the wind farm, saying that they falsely cause cancer. Administration has stopped approval For the wind farms on public land and in federal waters and threatened to block projects on private land.
“The wind is separated because it had a uniquely bad record of increasing the prices and increasing the anger of citizens, whether you are a farm or you are in the coastal community,” said Mr. Wright. “So the wind is a slightly different case.”
Trump policies of administration They are not uniformly popular Among oil and gas producers. Many companies have warned that Mr. Trump and Aluminum tariffs can increase the prices of essential materials such as pipes used in the new wells facilities, while a constant threat to tariffs on the Canadian oil could increase the prices of refinery in the Middle West.
Mr. Wright mostly bypassed questions about tariffs, saying that she was “very early” and pointing out that the inflation was low during Mr. Trump’s first term.
Ivan Penn Contributing to reporting
