Trump picks Perry to lead Energy Department he once vowed to kill Conservatives view Perry as someone with management experience who would be willing to question the agency’s status quo. 
 
 On a presidential debate stage five years ago, Rick Perry blanked on the Energy Department's name when trying to include it in a list of agencies he promised to abolish — memorably concluding with "oops." 
 
 Now Donald Trump has chosen the former Texas governor to lead the sprawling department, which oversees the security of the nation's nuclear weapons and has played major roles in President Barack Obama's climate agenda and nuclear deal with Iran. Three sources close to the transition confirmed the choice Tuesday. 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 Conservatives had favored the former Texas governor for the job, viewing him as someone with management experience who would be willing to question the agency’s status quo. They believe Perry might bring serious reform to the agency because he isn't wedded to energy programs, such as DOE's fossil and efficiency offices, that conservatives have criticized as unnecessary, market-distorting schemes. 
 
 Trump's choice of his fellow climate skeptic and former 2016 presidential primary rival comes just a year and a half after Perry described the brash New Yorker as a “cancer on conservatism.” It also arrives at a time of heightened political pressure for DOE, which has a $29.6 billion budget and more than 100,000 federal employees and contractors sprawled around the country. 
 
 The conservative Heritage Foundation last month urged the next president to eliminate vast swaths of the department, including all the research, development, regulatory and loan programs that the Obama administration has used to drive advances in green energy, as well as its 700-million-barrel Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And last week, Trump's transition team asked DOE to supply the names of all agency employees who had worked on Obama's climate initiatives, a request that Democrats and former staffers denounced as a "witch hunt." 
 
 A Trump spokesman, when asked Tuesday whether the incoming president planned to dismantle the agency in its current form, declined to rule it out. 
 
 "We haven't made any comments or plans as far as specific agencies. The one thing we've seen from the president-elect so far is he won't be shy calling out -- whether it's taxpayer fraud or abuse or certain deals put together that aren't doing right by the taxpayers," Trump spokesman Jason Miller told reporters. 
 
 Perry, the longest-serving governor in Texas history, also had the Energy Department in his sights during the 2012 presidential campaign, when he called for eliminating it as part of his program to shrink the federal government. 
 
 That was the origin of Perry’s “oops” moment in November 2011, when he said during a Republican debate that “it’s three agencies of government when I get there that are gone: Commerce, Education and the, uh, uh, what’s the third one there, let’s see?” Pressed on whether he could name the third agency, he confessed: “I can’t. Sorry.” 
 
 Perry later said the third agency would have been the Energy Department. 
 
 That memory hiccup seemed to be the least of his worries in appealing to Trump, whom he had scorched during his short-lived second bid for the GOP presidential nomination last year. Besides likening Trump to cancer in July 2015, Perry called the New Yorker's campaign “a toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition if pursued” — a rhetorical assault arguably harsher than the later salt-the-earth attacks that Mitt Romney launched on the GOP nominee. 
 
 By May, however, Perry endorsed Trump saying, "He wasn't my first choice, wasn't my second choice, but he is the people's choice." 
 
 Perry, a former Air Force captain, made at least two visits to Trump Tower in recent weeks, which kicked off speculation that he was angling for a national security-related post, such as secretary of Defense. He also met with Trump at the Army-Navy football game in Baltimore on Saturday and visited the Tower on Monday. 
 
 He also went to bat for Trump when the real estate mogul drew criticism for going after Khizr Khan, the father of a fallen U.S. soldier, who had delivered a scathing rebuke at the Democratic National Convention this summer. The elder Khan then continued to assail the Republican nominee on television. 
 
 “Mr. Khan is the one that went out and struck the first blow,” said Perry in August. “And in a campaign, if you're going to go out and think you can take a shot at someone and not have incoming coming back at you, shame on you.” 
 
 Perry was once a Democrat and even served as Al Gore's state chairman during the 1988 presidential campaign — a fact Perry found himself defending during his first White House run. “This was Al Gore before he invented the internet and got to be Mr. Global Warming,” Perry told an Iowa radio station in August 2011. (Gore’s later rejoinder: "I don't know what has happened to him since then.") 
 
 After leaving the governor's office in 2015, Perry landed a job as chief strategy officer at MCNA Dental, a dental insurance company that had been a major donor to his presidential campaign. Early this year he ran afoul of a Florida ethics law by failing to register as a lobbyist before meeting with Gov. Rick Scott to discuss MCNA's role in the state’s Medicaid program, as POLITICO reported at the time. 
 
 Rep. Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said Perry's expected nomination "defies all logic," citing the former governor's previous interest in dismantling the agency. 
 
 The New Jersey lawmaker, who won't get to vote on Perry's nomination, also zinged the incoming DOE chief for his reality show adventure earlier this year: "It is also deeply unsettling that our current Secretary of Energy, a renowned nuclear physicist, could be succeeded by a contestant on Dancing with the Stars. Governor Perry is simply not qualified for this position and should be rejected.” 
 
 "Dancing with the Stars" began trending on Twitter Tuesday morning. 
 
 By taking charge of the Energy Department, Perry would be leading an agency often slighted by presidents — for many presidents-elect, including Trump, it's among the last Cabinet posts to be filled — despite its significant national security footprint. While the agency writes efficiency regulations, runs energy research programs and funds basic science, it’s also the overlooked guardian and caretaker of the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile. 
 
 DOE and its network of national labs also played an integral part in the Obama administration’s formulation and defense of last year’s Iran nuclear deal. It has also issued billions of dollars in loans and loan guarantees for green-energy projects backed by companies like Tesla and Google, helping foster a boom in projects such as large wind farms and utility-scale solar power installations — although Republicans have preferred to focus on its $535 million loan guarantee to the failed solar manufacturer Solyndra. The much-maligned program, overall, is now a net profit for the federal government, although many conservatives believe such projects should be left to the private sector on principle. 
 
 Nuclear weapons maintenance and Cold War nuclear waste cleanup projects consume about two-thirds of DOE’s budget every year, and Perry is likely to be paired with a deputy energy secretary with a greater expertise in those areas. In addition, lawmakers are expected to restart the long-stalled nuclear waste project underneath Yucca Mountain, Nev. — long bottled up by opposition from retiring Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid — putting the issue back on DOE’s agenda. 
 
 During Perry’s White House campaigns he repeatedly called for “energy independence,” along with a rollback of regulations coming out the Interior Department and the EPA. 
 
 The oil business is a home state industry for Perry, and he's on the board of directors for Energy Transfer Partners, the developers of the controversial Dakota Access pipeline, which would ship as much as 570,000 barrels a day of oil from the shale fields of North Dakota across four states. That $3.7 billion project — the target of months of heated protests — experienced a setback earlier this month when the Army Corp of Engineers announced that it would study alternative routes for the pipeline. 
 
 According to disclosures with the SEC, Perry received nearly $237,000 in cash and shares from the company last year. While DOE doesn't have a direct responsibility for pipeline projects, Perry likely will have to step down from the board and sell any stock he might have in the company should be get confirmed. 
 
 Almost anyone Trump selected for DOE was expected to shift away from the Obama administration’s emphasis on addressing climate change, and Perry fits the bill. Where Trump has called climate change a “hoax,” Perry has gone even further by alleging a profit motive, asserting that “a substantial number of scientists ... have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects.” 
 
 While the levers of energy regulation are limited at DOE when compared to agencies like EPA, Perry could slow-walk the department’s appliance efficiency mandates and de-emphasize its research on climate science. Those efficiency regulations account for half of the greenhouse gas reduction targets that Obama made part of his Climate Action Plan in 2013. And there's no undoing them in one fell swoop: Dozens of rulemakings are involved and would require a massive, years-long effort to go after them one by one. 
 
 Renewable energy research at DOE may also take a hit under Perry, even though he presided over a massive boom in Texas’ wind power production fueled by federal incentives — enough that the state’s been looking to sell its excess power across the border into Mexico. 
 
 The Heritage Foundation has urged the incoming Trump administration to go even further, saying the next secretary should take an ax to much of the department to “end the destructive role played by the federal government in the energy sector.” 
 
 Although many in Congress, including Republicans, would resist overhauling too much of the agency, a Heritage “blueprint” released last month said DOE should eliminate all spending on research, development and commercialization of energy technologies, and put the private sector in charge of managing nuclear waste. It went on to call for getting rid of its programs on green energy, efficiency and energy reliability, and revoking Obama’s mandates that federal agencies get more of their electricity from renewable sources. 
 
 The conservative group also said the department should draw down and sell all the oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the stockpile that the government has held for decades to guard against foreign-driven shocks to the global oil markets. “Eliminating the government-controlled stockpile will reveal that private inventories and reserves are sufficient to meet U.S. needs, and private markets will respond more efficiently to supply shocks,” the group said. ||||| Image copyright AP Image caption Rick Perry at Trump Tower 
 
 Donald Trump has picked ex-Texas Governor Rick Perry as his energy secretary, a department whose name he famously forgot in a TV debate. 
 
 The nomination puts Mr Perry in charge of an agency he proposed abolishing in a failed 2012 White House bid. 
 
 Environmental groups called the oil-drilling advocate's selection "an insult to our functioning democracy". 
 
 In the role, the recent Dancing with the Stars contestant would oversee America's nuclear arsenal. 
 
 Trump appoints another military veteran 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption 'Oops': Rick Perry's debate disaster 
 
 Mr Trump said in a statement: "As the governor of Texas, Rick Perry created a business climate that produced millions of new jobs and lower energy prices in his state, and he will bring that same approach to our entire country as secretary of energy." 
 
 If confirmed by the Senate, green activists fear Mr Perry will shift the department away from renewable energy and towards fossil fuels. 
 
 During 14 years as governor, he called for lighter regulation of the oil industry, and referred to the science around climate change as "unsettled". 
 
 Mr Perry is on the board of directors at Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. 
 
 Accepting the nomination, Mr Perry said: "I look forward to engaging in a conversation about the development, stewardship and regulation of our energy resources, safeguarding our nuclear arsenal, and promoting an American energy policy that creates jobs and puts America first." 
 
 Image copyright ABC Image caption Mr Perry was the second contestant eliminated on this season's Dancing with the Stars 
 
 He was briefly frontrunner in a previous Republican White House race until a disastrous brain freeze on live television. 
 
 During the November 2011 forum, Mr Perry vowed to ditch three cabinet-level departments if elected. 
 
 After mentioning the departments of Commerce and Education, he said: "I can't. The third one, I can't. Sorry. Oops." 
 
 It was, he later recalled, the Department of Energy. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption 'Just friends' - Trump hosts Kanye West 
 
 Mr Perry, 66, left office in January 2015 and briefly ran again - again unsuccessfully - for this year's presidential election. 
 
 He was a fierce critic of Mr Trump, calling him "a barking carnival act" and "a cancer on conservatism". 
 
 Mr Trump had belittled Mr Perry, saying: "He put on glasses so people will think he's smart." 
 
 Mr Perry was the second contestant eliminated on this season's Dancing with the Stars. ||||| Donald Trump is expected to choose a man to lead the Department of Energy who infamously forgot its name. 
 
 Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry is expected to be announced as Trump's pick for secretary of energy — a surprise to some, since Perry previously said he would eliminate the agency if he had his way. 
 
 During a presidential primary debate on CNBC in 2011, when then-candidate Perry was listing "three agencies of government, when I get there, that are gone," he was able to name Commerce and Education but blanked on the third, saying, "What's the third one there?" 
 
 When moderators asked him, after a pause, if he could recall the last one, he said, "I can't. The third one I can't. Sorry. Oops." 
 
 Paul Sancya/AP Photo 
 
 The day after the debate fumble, Perry appeared on the "Late Show With David Letterman" to announce his "Top 10 excuses." The bit included reasons like "I thought the debate was tonight" and "I had a five-hour energy drink six hours before the debate." 
 
 While Perry's biggest gaffe during the 2012 race may have come from what he didn't say, it's something he did say during this election cycle that he may regret now. 
 
 In July 2015, Perry, at the time making a second bid for president, called Trump's candidacy "a cancer on conservatism" and hurled several other insults at his then-rival. 
 
 "He is without substance, when one scratches below the surface," Perry said during a speech at the Opportunity and Freedom PAC forum in Washington, D.C. "He offers a barking carnival act that can be best described as Trumpism, a toxic mix of demagoguery and mean-spiritedness and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition if pursued." 
 
 Despite these kerfuffles, Perry is expected to be named as Trump's choice for secretary of energy, senior transition officials told ABC News. Perry met with Trump at least twice in recent days. 
 
 If Perry is selected, his ties to energy companies will be in question as potential conflicts of interest. One of the clearest possible conflicts: his place on the board of directors of Energy Transfer Partners, which owns a subsidiary planning to build the Dakota Access Pipeline. 
 
 ABC News' Arlette Saenz contributed to this report. ||||| Donald Trump Taps Rick Perry To Head Agency He Once Forgot 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 Updated 7:51 a.m. ET Dec. 14 with official announcement of Perry's nomination. 
 
 It's a good thing former Texas Gov. Rick Perry once forgot he wanted to eliminate the Department of Energy, because President-elect Donald Trump is nominating him to lead the agency. 
 
 Perry, who served 14 years as governor of energy-rich Texas, blanked on the Department of Energy's name during a televised gaffe in a 2011 debate that was probably the most high-profile moment of his troubled 2012 presidential run. It's become known as the "Oops" moment: 
 
 YouTube 
 
 Perry ran again in 2016. But in an early sign of the electorate's anti-establishment mood, he and several other multiple-term governors dropped out of the race in its early stages, while Trump, a man with no prior political experience, rushed to the head of the Republican primary pack. 
 
 Perry was critical of Trump, warning that he was a "cancer on conservatism," but he eventually endorsed him. 
 
 In a statement, Trump said Perry would carry out his goal to "take advantage of our huge natural resource deposits to make America energy independent and create vast new wealth for our nation." 
 
 In one of the many only-in-2016 twists, the former Texas governor appeared on Dancing With The Stars this fall as the onetime-Apprentice star contended for, and ultimately won, the White House: 
 
 If confirmed, Perry would oversee a broad-reaching department with ties in everything from funding energy research and providing loans for alternative energy efforts, to tracking and analyzing American energy production and consumption, to securing the safety of America's nuclear weapons. 
 
 (Despite the popularity of Netflix's summer hit Stranger Things, the Department of Energy does not explore parallel universes. It actually put out a statement about this during the show's cultural peak.) 
 
 The current energy secretary, Ernest Moniz, a nuclear physicist, played a major role in negotiating and crafting the Obama administration's controversial nuclear deal with Iran. Under Obama, the department has been a big booster of alternative energy like wind and solar power. 
 
 A questionnaire the Trump transition team sent to Department of Energy employees is raising a lot of questions about how the incoming administration would change the department's priorities. As NPR reported: 
 
 "It wants to know who at the Department of Energy attended domestic and international climate talks. It wants emails about those conferences. It also asks about money spent on loan-guarantee programs for renewable energy. ... The Trump team questionnaire also asks about the Energy Department's role in the Iran nuclear deal, which Trump has called 'stupid.' And it asks for the 20 highest paid employees at the department's national laboratories." 
 
 The questionnaire alarmed Democrats, like Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, who sent a letter to Trump raising concerns that "this request suggests that your administration may intend to retaliate against career employees who faithfully executed their responsibilities." 
 
 Trump has repeatedly expressed skepticism about wind power's cost and effectiveness. But under Perry, Texas heavily promoted wind. Massive wind farms dot the Texas landscape, and wind energy now produces more than 10 percent of the energy the state consumes. ||||| The Senate confirmed Former Texas governor Rick Perry to head the Energy Department. Here's what you need to know about him. (Bastien Inzaurralde,Julio Negron,Osman Malik/The Washington Post) 
 
 President-elect Donald Trump picked Rick Perry to head the Energy Department on Wednesday, seeking to put the former Texas governor in control of an agency whose name he forgot during a presidential debate even as he vowed to abolish it. 
 
 Perry, who ran for president in the past two election cycles, is likely to shift the department away from renewable energy and toward fossil fuels, whose production he championed while serving as governor for 14 years. 
 
 His nomination — announced officially by Trump’s transition team a day after sources leaked the decision — stirred further alarm from environmental groups and others worried that the Trump administration will roll back efforts to expand renewable energy and give a powerful platform for officials questioning the scientific consensus on climate change. 
 
 The Energy Department was central to the 2011 gaffe that helped end his first presidential bid. Declaring that he wanted to eliminate three federal agencies during a primary debate in Michigan, Perry then froze after mentioning the Commerce and Education departments. “The third one, I can’t. Sorry. Oops.” 
 
 [Trump taps Montana congressman Ryan Zinke, who frequently votes against environmentalists, as Interior secretary] 
 
 Later during the debate, Perry offered: “By the way, that was the Department of Energy I was reaching for a while ago.” 
 
 Speaking to reporters once the event was over, he said, “The bottom line is I may have forgotten energy, but I haven’t forgotten my conservative principles, and that’s what this campaign is really going to be about.” 
 
 Despite its name, most of the Energy Department’s budget is devoted to maintaining the nation’s stockpile of nuclear warheads and to cleaning up nuclear waste at sites left by military weapons programs. The department runs the nation’s national laboratories, sets appliance standards and hands out grants and loan guarantees for basic research, solar cells, capturing carbon dioxide from coal combustion and more. 
 
 Four years after his first Oval Office bid, the former governor sought it once again in the big Republican field that included Trump. Perry touted the high rate of job growth and the low tax rate his state enjoyed under his leadership. At one point, he dismissed Trump’s campaign as a “barking carnival act.” 
 
 [What Rick Perry’s wink says about his own art of the deal] 
 
 The child of a cotton farmer and county commissioner from west Texas, Perry immersed himself in politics from a young age. He was elected as a Democrat to the state legislature but switched to the GOP when he ran for Texas agriculture commissioner. 
 
 As governor, he recruited out-of-state firms to Texas. In 2013, he starred in an ad that aired in California in which he declared that companies should visit his home state “and see why our low taxes, sensible regulations and fair legal system are just the thing to get your business moving. To Texas.” 
 
 Salo Zelermyer, who served as a senior counsel at the Energy Department’s general counsel’s office under President George W. Bush and is now a partner at the Bracewell law firm, said Perry has proven “it is indeed possible to successfully balance appropriate environmental regulations with domestic energy production and use.” 
 
 “During his time in office, Perry embodied the type of ‘all of the above’ approach to U.S. energy production that many have advocated on both sides of the aisle,” Zelermyer said. “Rick Perry’s Texas was not only a world leader in oil and gas production; it was also a global leader in wind power and renewable energy investment. This approach is a big reason Texas experienced such enormous job growth during Perry’s tenure.” 
 
 [Trump says ‘nobody really knows’ if climate change is real] 
 
 But environmentalists take a dim view of Perry. The former governor has repeatedly questioned scientific findings that human activity is helping drive climate change. In 2011 during a presidential debate, he compared the minority of scientists who challenged this assumption to 17th-century astronomer Galileo, who was persecuted by the Catholic Church after suggesting that the Earth revolved around the Sun, rather than the reverse. 
 
 “The science is not settled on this. The idea that we would put Americans’ economy at jeopardy based on scientific theory that’s not settled yet to me is just nonsense,” Perry said at the time. “Just because you have a group of scientists who stood up and said here is the fact. Galileo got outvoted for a spell.” 
 
 In his 2010 book, “Fed Up!” Perry described the science showing that climate change was underway and caused by humans as a “contrived phony mess,” writing that those who embraced this idea “know that we have been experiencing a cooling trend, that the complexities of the global atmosphere have often eluded the most sophisticated scientists, and that draconian policies with dire economic effects based on so-called science may not stand the test of time.” 
 
 [Yes, Trump met with Al Gore. But his transition tells a very different climate story] 
 
 “Al Gore is a prophet all right, a false prophet of a secular carbon cult, and now even moderate Democrats aren’t buying it,” he added, referring to the former vice president and environmentalist. Gore met with Trump recently to discuss climate change. 
 
 Later, during the 2012 presidential campaign, Perry said, “There are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects.” 
 
 In fact, the top 10 hottest years on record have all been since 1998, and 2016 is expected to be the hottest year since formal record-keeping began in 1880. The 2014 summary report for policymakers by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was endorsed by officials from nearly 200 countries, stated, “Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic [human caused] emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history.” 
 
 [Trump has picked the most conservative EPA leader since 1981. This one will face much less resistance.] 
 
 “There is no doubt that Rick Perry is completely unfit to run an agency he sought to eliminate — and couldn’t even name. Perry is a climate change denier, opposes renewable energy even as it has boomed in Texas, and doesn’t even believe CO2 is a pollutant,” League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski said in a statement. “Not only that, he is deep in the pocket of Big Polluters, who have contributed over $2.5 million to his presidential campaigns, a disturbing sign that they expected him to protect their profits in office, not do what’s best for the American people.” 
 
 Bill Richardson, who was energy secretary under President Clinton, said that Perry was a deal maker, political presence and good manager, and therefore a “sensible choice.” But he said that “my big concern is that he’s too tied to the fossil fuel industry and because of Donald Trump’s positions he will try to dismantle the very valuable renewable energy and climate change programs and policies that are a huge part of the DOE.” 
 
 Wind power did expand under Perry during his tenure in Texas — from 200 megawatts in 2000 to 14,098 megawatts in 2014, according to the American Wind Energy Association — and he supported the construction of transmission lines nearly a decade ago that helped bring wind-generated electricity to market. 
 
 “He created an environment conducive to economic investment through robust infrastructure and competitive power markets that allowed new technologies to enter,” said Tom Kiernan, the chief executive of the American Wind Energy Association, in a statement. “The Texas model under Gov. Perry’s leadership enabled the growth of low-cost wind energy that made the grid more diverse and reliable while saving consumers money.” 
 
 [Energy Dept. rejects Trump’s request to name climate change workers, who remain worried] 
 
 “The fact that Gov. Perry refuses to accept the broad scientific consensus on climate change calls into question his fitness to head up a science-based agency like DOE,” said Ken Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists. But, he added, as governor Perry “increased the ambition of the state’s Renewable Energy Standard, directed state funds to innovative wind energy R&D initiatives, and created a ‘Competitive Renewable Energy Zone’ that helped expand transmission of renewables, bringing clean wind energy from rural communities to new state markets.” 
 
 However during a 2015 Iowa Agriculture Summit in Des Moines, the former governor said he opposed extending the federal tax credit for wind power. “I do if a state wants to do it,” he said. “I don’t at the federal level. I think all of these need to be looked at, whether it’s oil and gas, whether it’s the wind side, whether it’s the [Renewable Fuel Standard program] — I think all of them need to be put on the table, prove whether or not these are in fact in the best interest of this country.” 
 
 Referring to renewable sources, Jennifer Layke, the World Resources Institute energy program director, said: “The Department of Energy leads essential programs that drive innovation and fill important gaps to get new technologies off the ground. These are vital to keep the U.S. at the frontier of energy technology. In recent years, the Department of Energy has given U.S. businesses a significant boost to accelerate the development of battery storage, solar panels and electric vehicles. These programs must continue.” 
 
 Perry sits on the board of Energy Transfer Partners, the firm that is trying to complete work on the Dakota Access Pipeline on the Great Plains. Under President Obama, the Army Corps of Engineers recently decided to withhold a key permit from the company that is needed to finish the oil pipeline. The pipeline has drawn protests from activists who say that segment of the pipeline would disturb American Indian burial grounds and pollute the drinking water of the nearby Indian reservation. The Energy Department has not played a role in that decision-making process, however, and Trump has indicated he would allow the project to move forward once he takes office. 
 
 [DOE leaders refuse to identify specific climate change employees for Trump transition team] 
 
 The Energy Department Perry would take over has changed substantially since its creation in 1977 under President Carter on the heels of the oil crisis that struck after the Arab countries of OPEC imposed an embargo on the United States. In the 1970s, the agency focused on weapons maintenance and regulations. In the 1980s, nuclear weapons research took center stage. In the 1990s, arms control and anti-proliferation took priority. 
 
 But the last two secretaries, physicists Steven Chu and Ernest Moniz, have moved laboratories and other energy programs toward finding ways to slow climate change. The much derided loan and loan guarantee program — which stumbled with a half billion loss linked to solar panel maker Solyndra — has as of September had issued $31.98 billion in loans and loan guarantees for 30 projects, which have leveraged $50 billion in total project investment and created or saved 56,000 jobs. More than $1.65 billion in interest payments have already been paid. 
 
 Moniz also used his knowledge of physics and nuclear weapons, and the department’s national laboratories to play a key role in talks aimed at limiting Iran’s nuclear program. Perry brings lacks that knowledge. 
 
 If confirmed, Perry would walk into an agency where many career civil servants are likely to be wary of him, not only because of his past pledge to abolish the department. Employees there are already on edge, given the fact that Trump’s transition team gave a questionnaire to DOE officials asking that they identify which employees have worked on either international climate negotiations or domestic initiatives to cut carbon. 
 
 Current DOE leaders have declined to provide any individual names of employees to Trump transition team members. 
 
 Speaking to reporters Tuesday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the administration needed to resist “what certainly could have been an attempt to target civil servants, career federal government employees … who are critical to success of the federal government’s ability to make policy, and their work transcends the term of any one president. That’s by design.” 
 
 “Our principle — this is principle that presidents of both parties have long abided by — is that we should observe the protections that are in place, that ensure that career civil servants are evaluated based on merit, and not on politics,” Earnest added, before tweaking Trump for his latest Cabinet pick. “And I’m sure the president-elect used the same kind of criteria when choosing his new Department of Energy Secretary as well. Don’t you think?” 
 
 1 of 35 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Here’s a look at Trump’s administration so far View Photos The men and women the president-elect has selected for his Cabinet and White House team. Caption The men and women the president-elect has selected for his Cabinet and White House team. Scott Gottlieb, nominee for commissioner of FDA President Trump is set to nominate Scott Gottlieb, a conservative physician and businessman with deep ties to the pharmaceutical industry, to be commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, a White House official said. Courtesy of American Enterprise Institute/via Reuters Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. 
 
 Dan Balz contributed to this report. 
 
 Read more at Energy & Environment: 
 
 Trump names Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma attorney general suing EPA on climate change, to head the EPA 
 
 Atmospheric levels of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, are spiking, scientists report 
 
 Trump transition team for Energy Department seeks names of employees involved in climate meetings 
 
 For more, you can sign up for our weekly newsletter here and follow us on Twitter here.
– News that Donald Trump has settled on Rick Perry to run the Energy Department prompted a slew of stories Tuesday with one common refrain, and the former Texas governor must be thrilled with it. Here's a sampling: NBC News: "President-elect Donald Trump has selected former Texas Gov. Rick Perry—who famously once forgot that he wanted to abolish the Energy Department—to be secretary of energy ..." New York Times: "Trump plans to name former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas to lead the Energy Department, elevating a man who once could not remember the name of the agency he wanted to eliminate to the cabinet post, secretary of energy, that will run it." Washington Post: "Trump has picked Rick Perry to head the Energy Department, said two people familiar with the decision, seeking to put the former Texas governor in control of an agency whose name he forgot during a presidential debate even as he vowed to abolish it." Politico: "On a presidential debate stage five years ago, Rick Perry blanked on the Energy Department's name when trying to include it in a list of agencies he promised to abolish—memorably concluding with 'oops.' Now Trump has chosen the former Texas governor ..." ABC News: "Trump is expected to choose a man to lead the Department of Energy who infamously forgot its name." BBC: "Trump is expected to pick ex-Texas Governor Rick Perry as his energy secretary, a department whose name he famously forgot in a TV debate." NPR: "It's a good thing former Texas Gov. Rick Perry once forgot he wanted to eliminate the Department of Energy, because President-elect Donald Trump is nominating him to lead the agency. That's according to reports by multiple news outlets." And so on, even here.