WASHINGTON — The White House has withdrawn its controversial nominee to head the Council on Environmental Quality, Kathleen Hartnett White, whose selection a year ago had failed to gather momentum with some Senate Republicans raising questions about her expertise.

The administration released a statement Sunday in which Hartnett White asked that her name be pulled from further consideration, effective immediately. President Trump had renominated Hartnett White January after the Senate failed to vote on her nomination during the last congressional session, due in part to fierce opposition from Democrats.

“I want to thank President Trump for his confidence in me and I will continue to champion his policies and leadership on environmental and energy issues of critical importance to making our nation great, prosperous and secure again,” she said in the statement.

Hartnett White, who once headed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and now serves as a fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, has stirred controversy because of her statements on climate change. Testifying last fall before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, she said that while humans probably contribute to warming, “the extent to which, I think, is very uncertain.”

Her comments contradict the conclusion of an overwhelming number of scientific experts and the findings of the federal government. Leading scientific assessments have repeatedly found that recent climate change is fueled largely by human greenhouse gas emissions.

“I’m not a scientist, but in my personal capacity, I have many questions that remain unanswered by current climate policy,” Hartnett White said at her confirmation hearing. “I think we indeed need to have more precise explanations of the human role and the natural role.”

Just days before she testified, the federal government released its Climate Science Special Report, a collaboration among more than a dozen agencies that found “no convincing alternative explanation” other than human influence for the warming the world has experienced in the past 70 years.

“It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,” the document stated.

The influence of the CEQ, established in 1970 under the Nixon administration, has waxed and waned depending on who occupies the Oval Office. It coordinates activities across agencies and typically holds more power under Democratic presidents.