Trump’s agenda does not let his energy minister reach “energy level”.

Chris Wright, a Colorado Fracking Executive, was confirmed on Monday by the US Senate with a vote from 59 to 38 to become the next energy secretary.

Wright’s nomination hearing, which took place last month before the Senate committee and natural resources, was a relatively gracious matter. Although there were interruptions from demonstrators of the sunrise movement and a heated exchange with the Senator of California Alex Padilla about Wrights earlier comments that reject the connection between climate change and forest fires, Wright was not exposed to the controversial question that some of the other cabinet office of President Donald Trump was were confronted. He was introduced as a personal friend by Senator John Hickenlooper, a democrat, and four of the committee’s Democrats voted for his confirmation.

While he recognized that “climate change is a real and global phenomenon”, Wright also insisted that “there is no dirty energy and clean energy; All energy is different and everyone has different compromises. “He promised to” unleash American energy at home and abroad in order to restore our energy hominance “to conduct the world in the breakthroughs and in the breakthroughs of innovations and technologies” and “to build up again in America and to remove barriers for progress “. He urged himself to the political details of the committee members and expressed support for the expansion of nuclear power, renewable energies and the liquefied gas.

One reason for the friendly reception of Wrights was that he articulated a coherent, although the tendency to enable the USA, as the increase in domestic energy generation in all forms – including fossil fuels – – the USA – the USA – The climate crisis. The Wright’s vision largely overlaped with a number of ideas that are under the thinking of energy policy in both parties and in some areas of the climate movement, which have the opportunity to approve reforms and nuclear subsidies as adequate trading and to transmit -off for increased oil – and gas production.

In the hearing of the committee, the Senator Bill Cassidy in Louisiana a Republican and the senior sponsor of a legislative proposal for tax imports of carbon-intensive goods to Wright said: “I like their focus.” And both the Republican chairman of the committee, Mike Lee , as the democratic member Martin Heinrich, Martin Heinrich, asked Wright, to describe how he would promote energy.

“The term” energy frequency “definitely has a moment,” said Katie Auth, political manager of the energy for growth Hub and former USAI civil servant. “I have heard that it is used in many different contexts by many different people who come from various ideological perspectives.”

But what exactly does it mean?

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Alex Trembath, deputy director of the Breakthrough Institute – the Climate Denkfabrik, which may be best connected to the term, and a long -time gadfly of the environmental movement – said that a core idea of ​​his organization is: “Technology and plenty of energy can help, ecological To solve problems, not just cause them. “

The most obvious example is the hope that nuclear energy can help accelerate our transition from fossil fuels away without affecting reliability, but described self-described “eco-modern” such as Trembath Dream from a wide range of opportunities that through sufficient energy would be activated.

“If they had a lot of solar or nuclears, energy-intensive industrial processes such as water altization or agriculture in interiors look much more economical,” said Trembath. “You can imagine to eninate seawater and not to exhaust rivers and aquatic conductor. You could imagine that he could save land, products and other water -intensive plants. “

The term not only encompasses futuristic hopes of unlocking Miracle solutions by increasing the power supply. For the hundreds of millions of the world who have no access to electricity, it is immediately important, and the even larger numbers, the development of which is hindered by inadequate electricity infrastructure.

“We need a lot more power outside the United States and Europe, in Africa and Southeast Asia,” said Auth. “People not only need basic electricity services, they also have to build up competitive economies, but they have to build up modern industry, they must build up manufacturing facilities and be resistant to climate. You need electricity for air conditioning and all possible infrastructure. So I think that abundance means that we have to be extremely ambitious in the area and speed with which we try to build up the energy infrastructure around the world. “

In Wright’s confirmation negotiation, he spoke eloquently about the tragedy of energy poverty and the need for electrification in developing countries. “I think we will see more energy resources from our country and hopefully outside the world so that everyone else can live as we do,” he said.

“I estimated that Chris Wright was drawn to the fact that we take a matter of course here in the USA that the lights compete and that we have refrigerators and television, and that is simply not the reality for millions and millions of people.” said Auth, the energy for growth hub.

But Wright’s commitment to the energy versions was clear in contrast to the agenda, Augent in Project 2025, the Trump’s research and development so far.

Trump began his second administration by explaining an “energy emergency” – however, all new permits and leasing for wind energy in federal state and waters. The President then tried to freeze many federal grants and loans last week – an order that the government threw into chaos and whose current status is contested. And Trump’s general freeze of the government has already made up the government’s ability to make Wright’s vision, to help the development lines, Elecrife: Programs such as Power Africa, the USAID funds to end energy poverty in Africa, can now be under question have already been stopped.

The President’s movements raise the question of how exactly Wright can ensure as an energy -consumer “energy level” if his boss is not on board.

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“From day 1, the incoming Trump administration has scattered any pretext to support the energy equity,” said Tyler Norris, doctoral student at Duke University and former special advisor to the Energy Ministry (doe) in an e -mail. “Instead, it takes the unprecedented step to use the emergency powers of the executive to block the energy resources that the president does not like. To the extent that Mr. Wright prefers energy, he faces a steep hard struggle against a white house that is controlled by ideologues, which focus more on the implementation of tribal energy warfare than to solve real problems. “

“You see an energy sound in both parties,” said Trembath. On the Republican side, he pointed out the creation of the term “energy dominance”, of which he said that “it is really a Trumpy turn on the idea of ​​energy level”. And under Democrats, the frequency of energy can be practically called the leadership of the last four years of American energy policy, which combined massive federal investments in green technology with a record level of oil and gas production. “The Biden administration and the Democrats of the Ministry of Energy and Congress had their own vision of abundance in the Inflation Reducation Act and in the law on infrastructure investments and jobs,” said Trembath.

However, both parties also have their resistance to the energy -making agenda for the motivation, which range from the preservation of environmental groups to fossil fuel companies that consider renewable energies as an existential threat. And while liberals and the regulations they issue are often occupied as bad guys in the endlessly proliferating defendants about the lost industrial age of the United States, the new administration shows their ability to use the same tools to their targets.

“It could be made a very convincing argument that Trump’s executive commands have not yet been in the spirit of energy and energy dominance. They are draping more bureaucracy about projects they don’t like, ”said Trembath. “This is the Nimby procedure, which the Republicans complain about with holes for oil and gas, but if the shoe on the other foot likes to be the national environmental policy law against projects against projects that they do not like.”

The ability of Wrights to increase energy generation is limited by the fact that the energy capital simply does not control the building directly or allows most of the new energy infrastructures or the rules that regulate it. The most important part of the department’s budget is spent on maintaining the country’s nuclear weapons. The main levers of the DOE influence on the country’s power grids are the wallet for investments in new technologies and subsidies for project developers – and even in these areas, the money must be approved by the congress and ultimately subject to the president’s agenda.

“The EPA actually has more to say with the regulation of the energy infrastructure than at Doe. The interior department has more to say about the leasing of public areas, ”said Trembath. “With regard to the structure and regulation and approval of the infrastructure, it is largely outside the appearance of the DOE. The congress is also responsible for what is issued at the Doe. “

There are some arenas in which Wright will have the power to issue its ambitions such as liquefied natural gas clamps, for which Trump has revoked a moratorium of bidding administration and the DOE expenditure permits. A further purchase and sale of oil from the strategic oil reserve to stabilize energy prices, a practice that Bidens Energy Minister Jennifer Granholm is using strongly. Finally, the Ministry of Energy checks a one -time energy -finance authority called Labin Programs Office, which, as the best -known vehicle for the climate investments of the bids administration under the leadership of Jigar Shah, a former solar developer who likes to talk about “energy frequency” (the phrase appears in of his x biography).

A signal of Wright’s intentions arose during his hearing of the confirmation when Senator Mike Lee asked him to commit himself to issuing the issuance of new loan programs on the basis of a general inspector’s report, in which the general inspector’s report was charged. Wright said that he was aware of the report, but was not committed to suspending new loans.

The question – and the authority of Wright, decided how to proceed, was soon specified by the administration of financing. The office is effectively closed for the time being.