Chris Wright, a former oil tycoon who serves as President Donald Trump’s energy secretary, admitted to what he characterized as a major electoral liability for Republicans — but pointed the finger at “Obama-Biden policies” anyway.
That liability, Wright said, was rising energy costs, with electricity prices averaging 5.5% higher in July when compared to the year prior. And while critics have pointed to Trump’s rollback of clean energy incentives as the culprit for rising costs, Wright instead laid the blame directly at the feet of past Democratic administrations.
“The momentum of the Obama-Biden policies, for sure, that destruction is going to continue in the coming years,” Wright told Politico. “That momentum is pushing prices up right now. And who’s going to get blamed for it? We’re going to get blamed because we’re in office.”
Trump’s signature domestic policy bill, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, dismantles a number of clean energy initiatives introduced under former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, and instead prioritizes fossil fuels through expanded drilling, tax breaks and lease sales.
Energy experts have warned the OBBBA could spur on a surge in energy prices, including the energy policy think tank Energy Innovation, who in a July report said that the bill would “harm America by cutting new electricity capacity additions, increasing consumer power prices and reducing U.S. GDP and job growth.”
Wright, however, continued to lay the blame on former presidents Barack Obama and Biden for the surging energy costs, but conceded that renewable energy sources still had their place.
“What we’re doing is not ending renewables,” Wright said. “The previous administration thought wind, solar and batteries were going to power the world. They’re not going to power the world. So you just got to look at them in a more realistic context.”
Trump has long criticized renewable energy sources, particularly windmills, which he proclaimed to be a “con job,” “ugly” and “harmful.” Trump has also raged that windmills “kill all your birds,” with Wright echoing the president’s rhetoric on social media, writing on X recently that Trump was “spot on” on windmills, calling them a “train wreck.”