During a visit to Europe, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright, appointed by Donald Trump, urged the International Energy Agency (IEA) to abandon its commitment to sharply cutting greenhouse gas emissions and to pivot back toward fossil fuels. Wright called the IEA’s energy-transition goals a “destructive illusion” and warned the US might withdraw from the agency if it did not drop those goals within a year.
A former CEO of Liberty Energy, a US oil- and gas-fracking company, Wright has criticized what he calls “climate alarmism.” His department published a contentious July 2025 report that downplayed the economic harms of CO2-driven warming. That position comes even as one assessment put climate-fueled extreme-weather damages at about $120 billion (€101 billion) in 2025.
Wright argues policies driving the clean-energy transition have harmed US and EU economies, saying Europe’s shift away from fossil fuels has “reduced economic opportunities.” He has repeatedly linked so-called climate alarmism with reduced energy freedom, prosperity and national security in Western Europe.
Experts dispute that claim. Sam Alvis, associate director for environment and energy security at the UK’s Institute for Public Policy Research, says the idea that renewables have hurt Europe is “couldn’t be further from the truth.” Over a quarter of the EU’s energy now comes from clean sources, and onshore solar and wind remain the cheapest power options in a region with scarce domestic fossil fuels.
Solar-panel costs have plunged roughly 90% in a decade, driven by expanding Chinese manufacturing. A University of Surrey study found solar is now the cheapest large-scale power source globally, undercutting coal, gas and wind. By contrast, fossil-fuel prices have been volatile—European electricity and gas spiked after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, when Russia supplied much of the bloc’s gas. That shock increased dependence on US liquefied natural gas (LNG) and renewed calls for more investment in domestic renewables.
Julie McNamara, deputy policy director of the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, says competitive economies need abundant clean energy and that efforts to lock in more fossil-fuel use risk undermining European clean-energy commitments.
Spain is offered as an example of economic benefit from renewables. After massive wind and solar uptake, Spain—once the EU’s most expensive electricity market in 2019—saw power prices fall by about 75% by 2025, Ember reports. Green power has reduced coal and gas on Spain’s grid, leaving its fossil-fuel share about half that of gas-reliant Germany.
Wright also claimed some nations privately wish to revive fossil-based industries to regain competitiveness and reindustrialize. Alvis counters that electrified technologies are roughly four times more efficient than burning fossil fuels, so electrification delivers an immediate productivity boost. He argues European economic setbacks reflect being slow to adopt electrification, allowing fossil-fuel-based firms to be leapfrogged by more innovative competitors—China’s dominant electric-vehicle industry being a prime example.
Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute says Wright’s minimization of fossil-fuel harms and skepticism about renewables aligns with an administration aim of “American Energy Dominance,” pursued by expanding US fossil-fuel exports. From this perspective, domestic and international climate policy is seen as an obstacle to that goal.
Edited by: Tamsin Walker