Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the Biden administration was driving energy systems "into a ditch" through massive subsidies to unreliable sources like solar power and draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Wright appeared with his wife, Liz, on "The Katie Miller Podcast" Tuesday, where he criticized former President Joe Biden's energy policies for having a profound effect on the rest of the country.
"If you get energy wrong, you destroy your society," Wright said.
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"Another reason I think President Trump won, you know, the Biden administration literally wanted to drive our energy system into the ditch," he added. "Just outrageous. We, fortunately, pivoted before too much deep damage. But we've wasted trillions of dollars. We need to repair the energy infrastructure in the Gulf. If the damage grows, it just means energy prices are going to be higher for longer after it."
Wright also dismissed concerns about falling behind major countries like China regarding sources like solar power, pointing out that losing all solar power "wouldn't even be a hiccup" for the country.
"If you wiped all the solar panels off the planet tomorrow, no one would notice. We were losing 10% of sort of global oil production today. It is a massive crisis. If all of the solar was zeroed out tomorrow, the world would lose 1.2% of energy," Wright said.
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He emphasized that while he is generally "pro-solar," having worked in the solar industry, he was against subsidies to less reliable sources that drive up electricity prices. Wright instead suggested that nuclear power has a "very bright future" despite being "unfairly maligned" by climate activists.
"It's so much easier to sell fear than to sell reassurance," Wright said. "You know, that's the asymmetry in politics and activism… But the environmental industry really has become sort of a fear-selling industry. And boy, you can raise billions of dollars to scare people about things like nuclear power or climate change, where there's like a kernel of something there, but they're just wildly exaggerated. And unfortunately, it’s been effective."
He further criticized the Biden administration for draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower gas prices and "do well" during the 2022 midterm elections while praising the Trump administration's efforts to replenish it.
"At the end of next year, we'll have more oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve than we did when President Trump took office, meaningfully more oil than when he took office," Wright said.
Biden's office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
Wright has been critical of the Biden administration since he began his position as President Donald Trump's energy secretary last year. In May, he claimed that the Biden administration "strangled" the state of Alaska with more regulations than North Korea, Iran and Venezuela combined.
"Alaska, a state that has had more sanctions, more restrictions on production of oil and gas in Alaska than everything we did to Iran and Venezuela and North Korea if they produced any combined," he said. "You know, the last administration just strangled Alaska. This awesome state of immense natural resources."
