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US Energy Secretary vows to reverse Biden-era climate policies
19/3/2025
News
US Energy Secretary Chris Wright has launched an attack on renewables and current US climate policies and reaffirmed the Trump administration’s support for oil and natural gas exploration, in what he claimed will be ‘America’s common-sense pivot in energy’.
Speaking at S&P Global’s CERAWeek conference in Houston, Wright vowed a reversal of the Biden administration’s ‘very poor direction in energy policy’ and ‘politically polarising’ climate policies.
Wright said that wind and solar – ‘the darlings of the last administration’ – cannot replace fossil fuels deployed for power generation in the country, with natural gas accounting for 43% of all American power generated last year.
‘There is simply no physical way that wind, solar and batteries could replace the myriad uses of natural gas,’ he said.
The Energy Secretary dismissed the previous administration’s focus on climate as ‘myopic’.
‘The Trump administration will end the Biden administration’s irrational, quasi-religious policies on climate change that imposed endless sacrifices on our citizens,’ he said.
Although Wright did not deny the existence of climate change, he also did not argue that it should be either urgently reduced, or its effects mitigated. ‘We will treat climate change for what it is – a global physical phenomenon that is a side effect of building the modern world,’ he said.
Instead, Wright called Biden’s policies ‘economically destructive to our businesses and politically polarising’. ‘The cure was far more destructive than the disease,’ he added.
Claiming that the last administration ‘recklessly pursued policies that were certain to drive up electricity prices’, Wright vowed there would be a ‘no more all-of-government approach to making energy more expensive, less reliable and making it nearly impossible to build more scale things in our country’.
He then announced a five-year deadline extension for Delfin LNG to begin exports from its proposed project offshore Louisiana. The order extends the start date for Delfin’s export authorisation for exports of up to 1.8bn ft3/d of LNG to non-free trade agreement countries to 1 June 2029.
Biden had previously paused export approvals to study the economic and environmental impacts. Wright noted that it was ‘hard to believe’ there was opposition to these policies that ‘so clearly benefit America’.
During his speech, Wright also argued that the Biden administration had implemented policies that did not promote consumer choice, such as electric vehicle mandates and regulations on household appliances.
Two main goals of the Trump administration’s approach to these appliances will be lowered cost and higher performance, according to Wright. ‘Is that radical?’ he asked.
He concluded by noting that the impact of AI could yield potentially ‘breathtaking’ advancements in fusion energy and claimed they are ‘likely to be demonstrated during this administration’.
