X users — including platform owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk — took Secretary of Energy Chris Wright to task over his perplexingly inaccurate claims about solar power.

On Monday, Secretary Wright tweeted: "Even if you wrapped the entire planet in a solar panel, you would only be producing 20% of global energy."  

This is Trump's Secretary of Energy being community noted on solar power.

😮‍💨🤌🏻 pic.twitter.com/GMdvTYfT9G

— Maine (@TheMaineWonk) September 2, 2025

X user Maine (@TheMaineWonk) shared a screenshot of Wright's tweet, pointing out that the Secretary of Energy was fact-checked by the community for what appeared to be a fundamentally poor understanding of solar functionality.

Musk, whose high-profile break with President Donald Trump appeared to hinge on electric vehicle subsidies, weighed in on related statements made by Wright and reiterated in a tweet later that day.

"Tragic," Musk's one-word reply read.

Wright's claim that total Earth solar panel coverage would top out at 20% of worldwide energy requirements was bizarre at best. 

In 2021, the London-based energy think tank Carbon Tracker found that by that time, renewables were already capable of meeting "more than 100 times global energy demand," and that's without wrapping the entire planet in solar but just through normal application of the tech.

In October, the U.S. Energy Information Administration — which is the statistical arm of the Department of Energy, currently headed by Wright — projected that "new U.S. solar electricity generating capacity will make up 63%, or nearly two-thirds, of all new electricity generating capacity in the United States."

Wright's own Department of Energy's "How Does Solar Work?" resource provided a definitive rebuttal to his claim.

"The amount of sunlight that strikes the Earth's surface in an hour and a half is enough to handle the entire world's energy consumption for a full year," the DOE explained.

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In other words, it almost defied credulity that Wright sincerely believed what he was claiming to believe, particularly given his academic background.

"How in the world can a graduate of MIT with a master's degree in electrical engineering make a mistake like that?" an X user replied. 

"It's all about eliminating any type of competition. Many of these people are bought off by the big corporations that would start to lose money because of other energy alternatives," another posited. 

While that remark was speculative, Politico published an interview with Wright on Aug. 19, centering on the secretary's escalating fears about skyrocketing energy costs. 

Wright "insisted that the Trump administration's efforts to stifle development of solar and wind power" were "not causing costs to spike," the outlet emphasized. The secretary's confounding statements about solar weren't the first time Wright brazenly mischaracterized scientific consensus on climate-related issues.

In August, Wright falsely claimed that the link between rising temperatures and extreme weather — which exists — was "nonsense."

However, in January, the Union of Concerned Scientists warned that Wright's positions were both dangerous and disingenuous prior to his confirmation as Secretary of Energy. In March, ProPublica highlighted that Wright had misrepresented his own positions on climate during his February confirmation hearings.

"It is a global issue. It is a real issue. It's a challenging issue. And the solution to climate change is to evolve our energy system. I am for improving all energy technologies that can better human lives and reduce emissions," Wright assured Congress at the time.

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