Chris Wright talking to Lucy Biggers for The Free Press

Clintel Foundation
Date: 11 September 2026

The interview is particularly notable because of Biggers’ own journey. A former climate activist who once accepted what she now describes as climate ‘doomerism,’ Biggers approached Wright to understand how an energy-abundance philosophy translates into actual policy, and why he believes it offers a better alternative to the climate-focused policies of the Biden and Obama administrations.

Coal

Wright begins his argument from history. Energy, he says, has been one of the great forces behind the transformation of human civilization. The arrival of coal made agriculture more productive, while oil enabled the development and expansion of modern medicine. As a result, global life expectancy has risen dramatically. Modern life, with its heating and air conditioning, transportation, lighting and running water, is fundamentally an energy-intensive achievement.

Yet Wright points out that the benefits of this modern energy system remain highly unequal. He estimates that only around one billion people enjoy what he calls a “fully energized life,” while billions more would like to attain a comparable standard of living. For them, he argues, there is no realistic route to prosperity that does not involve much greater energy consumption. “The only road from where we are today to that road is just massively more energy.”

That conviction shapes Wright’s criticism of the previous administration. He argues that the Department of Energy under Biden had become excessively focused on wind, solar, batteries and decarbonization, while largely avoiding hydrocarbons. This approach ignored the enormous scale of America’s and the world’s existing energy needs.

One of the problems he inherited, he says, was a planned reduction in reliable electricity generation at precisely the moment when electricity demand was poised to rise. Utilities had plans to retire a net 46 gigawatts of generation over five years, while Wright believes the United States will need roughly 100 gigawatts of additional generation because of artificial intelligence, data centres, manufacturing and automation. His first priority, therefore, was simply to stop retiring existing capacity.

For Wright, the basic calculation is straightforward. Energy policy should be judged by what it does for human beings, while environmental considerations remain part of the equation. He rejects the idea that this requires choosing one energy technology in advance. Instead, policymakers should ask which technologies can deliver abundant, reliable and affordable energy.

Wind and solar

This is where his criticism of wind and solar becomes particularly sharp. Wright points to the enormous sums invested globally in wind, solar, batteries and transmission infrastructure, arguing that these technologies still account for only a very small share of global primary energy. He also points to Britain, Germany and Denmark as examples of countries with high levels of renewable deployment and correspondingly high electricity prices.

Britain is his principal example. Wright argues that the country has substantially reduced domestic energy production and industrial capacity while continuing to depend heavily on hydrocarbons. He describes the relocation of industrial production abroad as little more than emissions outsourcing: goods that were once manufactured using natural gas in Britain may now be produced using coal in China and transported back by ship and truck. Such a system can make national emissions statistics look better without reducing global emissions.

Wright does not argue that solar and wind have no useful applications. Solar panels can make sense in remote locations, he says, and can even be useful in space. But he rejects the idea that they could eventually supply the bulk of the world’s energy. “Is the world ever going to run on solar panels and wind turbines? Absolutely not.”

His reasoning is partly technological. Wind and solar are intermittent, require substantial amounts of land and materials, and primarily produce electricity, while electricity itself represents only a fraction of total global energy consumption. Moreover, he argues, the manufacture of turbines, solar panels and batteries itself requires large amounts of energy and hydrocarbons.

Climate change

The climate question, however, is central to the interview. Wright stresses that he has spent decades studying climate change and does not deny its reality. Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide, he says, is a real phenomenon, and CO2 contributes to warming. But he strongly rejects the idea that climate change should dominate energy policy.

For Wright, climate change does not rank among humanity’s most pressing problems. The temperature increase observed over more than a century is relatively small when compared with ordinary variations in daily living conditions. He also points to the lack of an upward trend in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and droughts.

More importantly, Wright focuses on the decline in deaths from extreme weather. He contrasts the hundreds of thousands of annual deaths attributed to extreme weather in the early twentieth century with the far smaller number today, despite a much larger global population. This is evidence of the enormous protective effect of modern energy, infrastructure and technology.

The implication is crucial to his worldview: restricting energy in an effort to influence the climate could make vulnerable populations less resilient rather than safer. Modern buildings, reliable electricity and other forms of infrastructure allow societies to withstand extreme weather more effectively.

Wright is equally critical of the goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. He argues that even the economic analyses associated with climate policy show that the costs of achieving such a target could greatly exceed its potential climate benefits. Drawing on the economic logic associated with Nobel Prize-winning economist William Nordhaus, he says emissions reductions should be pursued when their benefits exceed their costs—not simply because they are technically possible.

He characterizes the alternative as an enormous opportunity to improve lives by ending energy poverty.

Approximately two billion people, Wright notes, still rely on wood, agricultural waste or dung for cooking and heating. The resulting indoor air pollution causes millions of premature deaths, according to the figures he cites. Wright has responded by launching the Bettering Human Lives Foundation, which supports businesses providing cleaner cooking fuels.

For him, the issue goes beyond health. Traditional cooking practices also consume enormous amounts of women’s time, particularly in Africa and South Asia, where women and children may spend hours gathering wood and tending fires. Access to modern fuels such as propane, Wright argues, can therefore dramatically expand women’s freedom and economic opportunities. “To me that is the biggest global energy challenge by far. Climate change isn’t even on the map compared to clean cooking fuels.”

Developing nations

This leads directly to another target of Wright’s criticism: wealthy countries that discourage developing nations from expanding hydrocarbon use. He regards it as contradictory for rich Western nations to continue relying heavily on oil and gas while attempting to prevent poorer countries from using the same energy sources to improve living standards.

California, meanwhile, serves as Wright’s domestic cautionary example. He argues that aggressive climate and energy policies have contributed to higher electricity and gasoline prices without eliminating the underlying dependence on oil and gas. California still obtains a large share of its energy from hydrocarbons, but at a higher cost to consumers.

He similarly questions what net-zero policies accomplish at the state or national level if energy-intensive manufacturing simply moves elsewhere. If production shifts from the United States or Europe to China or India, the emissions associated with producing the goods have not necessarily disappeared. They have merely moved geographically.

Wright sees natural gas as the clearest example of a technology that has already delivered meaningful emissions reductions. Nuclear power, however, is his favoured long-term opportunity. Unlike wind and solar, nuclear reactors provide continuous power and, Wright argues, have the energy density needed to support industrial society. Nuclear heat could also potentially provide the high-temperature process heat required to produce steel, cement, aluminium, plastics and other essential materials.

He expects nuclear energy eventually to become a much larger component of the global energy system. Fusion is another technology he views with enthusiasm, despite acknowledging that it must become economically competitive before it can be deployed on a large scale. He also points to next-generation geothermal technology as another potentially important source of reliable electricity.

Openness

The common denominator is technological openness. Wright says the administration is not opposed to innovation in solar or other technologies; rather, it opposes subsidizing technologies that it believes have limited potential while restricting technologies that currently provide reliable and affordable energy.

The same philosophy informs Wright’s view of the rapidly expanding electricity demand from artificial intelligence and data centres. He rejects the narrative that data centres are simply “guzzling” electricity and water while driving up costs for everyone else. Instead, he argues that new data centres can stimulate investment in additional generating capacity.

In Wright’s account, companies such as Google are helping finance new electricity generation as part of their data-centre projects, sometimes locking in electricity rates for several years. The result, he argues, can be more generation and greater grid reliability rather than higher prices.

He makes a similar argument about water use. Claims that data centres consume enormous quantities of water, he says, are exaggerated, particularly because many new facilities use closed-loop cooling systems. Wright compares their water consumption with that of agriculture and golf courses and argues that the public debate has been driven more by fear than by a careful examination of the numbers.

Economic opportunity

Underlying all these arguments is Wright’s belief that energy abundance can also restore economic opportunity. The expansion of manufacturing and construction, combined with new data centres and infrastructure, could create large numbers of skilled jobs outside America’s traditional economic centres. Wright sees this as particularly important for rural communities that have lost industrial employment.

He predicts that demand for skilled workers will increasingly exceed supply, driving up wages and encouraging young people to pursue technical careers. In his vision, energy abundance is therefore not merely an energy policy. It is part of a broader strategy to revive manufacturing, increase productivity and restore economic mobility.

Wright also believes that the political landscape is changing. He says he has been speaking with Democratic senators and governors and claims that the intensity of climate rhetoric has diminished significantly. He cites New England governors who once opposed additional natural-gas infrastructure but now support new gas pipelines as an example of how practical energy needs can change political positions.

His ultimate objective is not to persuade Americans to support one particular energy source. Instead, he wants to change the terms of the debate. “We’re just trying to bring common sense and science back.”

Wright’s vision is therefore deliberately expansive. Oil, gas and coal remain essential in his view because they currently provide energy at a scale and cost that alternatives cannot match. But he also wants nuclear, geothermal, fusion and new technologies to develop rapidly enough that they can eventually compete with, and potentially replace, hydrocarbons where they make economic and technological sense.

Optimistic

The interview ends on a notably optimistic note. Wright predicts that electricity prices will initially stabilize and, if his administration’s policies continue, eventually fall in nominal terms. He is similarly confident that gasoline prices can decline as American energy production increases.

For Wright, this optimism is not incidental. It is the ultimate purpose of energy abundance. Rather than telling people that prosperity requires consuming less and accepting higher costs in order to avert a climate catastrophe, he argues that the future should be built around producing more energy, developing better technologies and expanding access to modern living standards.

His central message is that humanity’s energy challenge is not that it uses too much energy, but that billions of people still use far too little. The policy question, therefore, is not how quickly societies can reduce energy consumption, but how quickly they can expand reliable and affordable supply. “The world just needs massively more energy.”

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