From London to Houston: How Chris Wright’s Anti-Net Zero Rhetoric Shifts

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Last Updated on: 11th March 2025, 05:48 pm

Chris Wright, the newly appointed U.S. Secretary of Energy, has wasted no time in making his stance on energy policy clear. In his first major international speech at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) Conference in London, he framed net-zero as an economic disaster and defended fossil fuel expansion. But just a few weeks later, at CERAWeek 2025 in Houston, his message shifted — he abandoned political arguments and instead leaned into misleading technical claims, asserting that renewables were physically incapable of replacing fossil fuels.

This rhetorical evolution — from attacking net-zero as bad policy to arguing that clean energy is technologically impossible — reveals the deeper strategy behind Wright’s messaging. He isn’t making an honest case for energy security; he’s shaping his arguments to fit his audience. At ARC, speaking to politicians and activists, he attacked climate policy. At CERAWeek, speaking to industry executives, he attacked climate physics.

The contradictions expose the fundamental weakness of his position — if his arguments were grounded in reality, he wouldn’t need to change them depending on who was listening.

ARC 2025: The Political Attack On Net-Zero

Wright’s first major speech as Secretary of Energy took place at ARC 2025 in London, where he laid out his vision for energy policy. His message was clear: net-zero is an economic failure, and fossil fuels remain essential.

“Net-zero 2050 is a sinister goal. It’s a terrible goal. It’s both unachievable by any practical means, but the aggressive pursuit of it… has not delivered any benefits, but it’s delivered tremendous cost.”

In this speech, Wright framed the energy transition as a political problem — a misguided policy pushed by governments at the expense of economic stability. He did not deny that renewables had a role to play, but he positioned fossil fuels as indispensable, arguing that any attempt to replace them entirely would lead to disaster.

This was a speech designed for a political audience. Wright wasn’t trying to convince engineers or scientists — he was appealing to policymakers, business leaders, and climate skeptics who view net-zero as an overreach. While his rhetoric was aggressive, it still left room for renewables, portraying them as a supplement rather than a replacement for fossil fuels.

But that changed when he got to Houston.

CERAWeek 2025: Pseudo-Science & The Primary Energy Fallacy

By the time Wright arrived at CERAWeek in Houston on March 10, 2025, his message had evolved. Instead of focusing on net-zero as a flawed policy, he shifted to a more technical argument — one that was equally misleading, but packaged as fact.

“There is simply no physical way that wind, solar, and batteries could replace the myriad uses of natural gas.”

This is demonstrably false. A fully electrified system, powered by renewables, eliminates the inefficiencies of internal combustion engines, coal power plants, and gas turbines. Electric vehicles (EVs) convert approximately 85% of their energy input into useful work, while gasoline vehicles operate at a mere 20% efficiency. The shift to EVs alone reduces overall energy demand while maintaining the same level of mobility.

Beyond transportation, electrification of heating with heat pumps would cut total energy demand even further. Heat pumps extract two-thirds of their energy from the environment and only require one-third from electricity, making them three to four times more efficient than gas boilers. The transition to heat pumps alone reduces heating energy demand by 66%, further undercutting Wright’s assertion that renewables cannot replace fossil fuels.

Unlike at ARC, where he framed net-zero as a political failure, Wright used CERAWeek to push a pseudo-technical argument that renewables physically cannot replace fossil fuels. This falsehood is grounded in the primary energy fallacy, which ignores the reality that electrification drastically reduces overall energy consumption by eliminating the waste inherent in fossil fuel systems.

The Real Energy Story: What Wright Won’t Say Out Loud

Wright’s arguments are especially disingenuous given that the USA doesn’t need nearly as much energy as it uses today and we already have a detailed roadmap for transitioning the U.S. to 100% renewable energy.

This is an energy flow diagram for the United States. The big gray box in the upper right is rejected or waste energy, almost entirely unusable heat from burning fossil fuels. It’s two-thirds of all the energy flowing into the economy on the right, the primary energy. Stanford professor Mark Z. Jacobson, energy analyst and entrepreneur Saul Griffith and I have all worked out using different approaches that only 40% to 45% of the energy coming in on the left is required to provide the same useful energy services on the right if the system is renewables to electric motors and heat pumps.

Jacobson, a leading researcher in energy system modeling, has outlined exactly what is required to replace fossil fuels with wind, water, and solar (WWS) resources. His peer-reviewed model proposes a mix of renewables that could fully power the U.S. by 2050. Jacobson’s model calculates that such a transition would require only 0.42% of U.S. land area for new infrastructure footprints, mostly for solar, and 1.6% for wind turbine spacing — land that can still be used for farming, grazing, and other activities. His research also highlights how a 100% renewable grid would not only cut emissions and air pollution but also create millions of jobs and significantly reduce energy costs in the long run. Further, the amount of land required for renewables would actually be less than the amount of land required for fossil fuel infrastructure end to end.

Wright must know this given his extensive background in energy. He’s not a stupid or ignorant man.

Wright Knows This — So Why Is He Lying?

If Wright believed his arguments could stand up to scrutiny, he would present them consistently. But instead, he shifts his tone and framing depending on who is listening.

• At ARC 2025, he focused on net-zero as a political failure, arguing that the transition would be too costly and disruptive.
• At CERAWeek, he abandoned the political argument and instead made a false technical claim that renewables could never replace fossil fuels.

Prior to his appointment as U.S. Secretary of Energy, Wright made several public statements regarding climate change:

• Denial of a Climate Crisis: In a January 2023 LinkedIn post, Wright asserted, “There is no climate crisis and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either.” He also dismissed the term “carbon pollution” as misleading. It’s possible that that’s the post that led me to block him on LinkedIn, realizing that he wasn’t a useful collaborator in energy and climate solutions.
• Advocacy for Fossil Fuels: Wright has been a vocal proponent of increasing fossil fuel production, arguing that hydrocarbons are essential not just to American energy independence but also to global development and poverty alleviation.
• Critique of Renewable Energy Subsidies: He has criticized subsidies for wind and solar energy, suggesting that they are not as effective as other energy sources like geothermal and nuclear.

These statements reflect a pattern of downplaying the urgency of climate change and advocating for the continued use of fossil fuels, which aligns with strategies often associated with climate change denial and delay.

These contradictions reveal that his position is politically, scientifically, and economically weak — and that, if he were fully transparent in all settings, his energy vision would face even greater scrutiny.

The Future Is Electric, Whether Wright Likes It or Not

The reality is clear: fossil fuel dependence is an economic and geopolitical liability. Renewables are already outcompeting coal and gas in cost, and their efficiency advantages mean that we don’t need to replace fossil fuels on a one-to-one basis. The transition to a clean energy future is not a question of feasibility — it is a question of whether political actors like Wright will delay it for the sake of short-term fossil fuel profits.

Chris Wright’s tenure as Secretary of Energy will be judged by history not by how effectively he clings to fossil fuel narratives, but by whether he enables the inevitable shift to a cleaner, more efficient system. The future is electric, whether he likes it or not.