IEA Meeting Ends Without Unity as US Pushes to Scrap Net Zero

International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol Photographer: Neil Hall/EPA/Bloomberg Photo by Neil Hall/EPA /Photographer: Neil Hall/EPA/Bloo

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(Bloomberg) — The conflicting positions of US President Donald Trump and major European governments came to the fore at a meeting of the west’s most important energy forecaster.

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For the first time in nine years, the International Energy Agency — created by developed nations in the 1970s to oversee energy security — failed to release a communique setting out unified positions on everything from climate to the war in Ukraine. Instead, it issued a “chair’s summary” at the conclusion of a two-day gathering of ministers in Paris on Thursday.

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US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said multiple times before and during the gathering that the IEA-backed net zero goal is unachievable, politically motivated and a bad idea. While Washington is evaluating its position as a member of the institution, its preference is to change it from within, he said.

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Net zero is “a platform that’s made energy more expensive and shrunk the growth of energy,” Wright said, adding there’s “zero-point-zero chance of it being achieved.”

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The decision to release a chair’s summary — and not a communique — reflects a struggle to reconcile divergent views among top member nations, according to people with knowledge of the matter. It’s the first time the IEA, steered by Executive Director Fatih Birol, has taken such a course since 2017, although it did do so sometimes before then.

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“A large majority of ministers stressed the importance of the energy transition to combat climate change and highlighted the global transition to net zero,” the chair’s summary stated.

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It went on to say that ministers “condemned, in the strongest possible terms, Russia’s illegal war of aggression” against Ukraine.

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Heading into the ministerial gathering, Wright had slammed the IEA for behaving in recent years as the “cheer-leader” for a net zero climate agenda that he argued has seen $10 trillion invested in clean energy over the past decade, with no tangible benefits.

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Nonetheless, a collapse in relations feared by some observers appeared to be avoided — at least for now.

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Wright also applauded Birol for recalibrating the IEA’s energy demand forecasts and its work on promoting clean cooking.

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Netherlands’ Climate Minister Sophie Hermans, who chaired the event, said that the final communication represented an attempt to “find the common ground.”

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The world has changed in recent years and some industries in Europe are suffering, including from high prices and costs. “We don’t want industries to move out of the Netherlands and out of Europe” to locations where they can produce without decarbonizing, she told Bloomberg.

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Criticisms

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Last year, following a barrage of criticisms from Republican lawmakers in Washington — the IEA tempered its stance on predicting an imminent peak in oil demand, reinstating a scenario in which global consumption keeps growing to the middle of the century. Some US politicians had threatened to cut the agency’s funding.