Eliza Collins

USA TODAY

The Department of Energy has no intentions of complying with Donald Trump's team's request for the names of people who had worked on climate policy under the Obama administration.

“We will be forthcoming with all publicly available information with the transition team. We will not be providing any individual names to the transition team,” spokesman Eben Burnham-Snyder said in a statement emailed to USA TODAY.

The request for the identities of staffers was part of a list of 74 questions submitted by the president-elect’s transition team last week. The Washington Post first reported the questionnaire.

"The Department of Energy received significant feedback from our workforce throughout the department, including the National Labs, following the release of the transition team’s questions. Some of the questions asked left many in our workforce unsettled,” Burnham-Snyder said.

“We are going to respect the professional and scientific integrity and independence of our employees at our labs and across our department,” he continued.

Trump has questioned climate change before, at one point saying it was made up by the Chinese. But he has signaled his views could be malleable since the election. And he's met with prominent activists including former vice president Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio.

But still, his Cabinet does not seem to line up with more progressive views of the current administration.

Former Texas governor Rick Perry is the likely pick to head the Department of Energy. In 2012, when he was running for president, Perry included Energy as one of the three departments he wanted to dismantle.

Trump has already nominated Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head up the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt is a climate change-skeptic and in a joint op-ed in The National Review he said the “debate is far from settled.” He has sued the EPA multiple times.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Tuesday the administration was working closely with Trump's transition team but said the reports of the questions "certainly could have been an attempt to target civil servants, career government employees.”

Earnest said those employees are “critical to the success” of the department. “Their work transcends the term of any one president. That’s by design. That's to ensure the continuity of the federal government.”

"The hiring and firing of those civil servants should be “based on merit and not on politics,” he said. “And I'm sure the president-elect used the same criteria when selecting his Secretary of Energy. Don’t you think?”

Contributing: Gregory Korte

Scott Pruitt, Trump's pick to head the EPA, has sued the EPA

Rick Perry, who said he wants to scrap Energy Dept., may lead it