Energy watchdog the IEA's biennial ministerial meeting in Paris this week was split over the energy transition, with a closing statement reflecting a sharp divide between the US and Europe.
The IEA issued a chair's summary of the two-day meeting of energy ministers, rather than the communique that has followed meetings since 2017. The chair's summary does not require unanimity. Meeting chair Dutch climate minister Sophie Hermans said the format was chosen "to make sure we could cover all the subjects" on which there were differences of opinion.
All references to climate or greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the text were attributed only to "some" or "a large majority of" ministers, while the role of renewables was recognised by "many".
And compared with the last communique, from 2024, the document makes fewer mentions of climate and emissions, and no reference to international climate agreements from UN Cop summits in Paris and Dubai.
The meeting was marked by interventions by US energy secretary Chris Wright, who criticised the IEA's focus on the energy transition and threatened to pull the US out of the IEA if it does not reform. Wright also said the US would "put pressure" on the IEA to change.
European leaders, meanwhile, spoke about the importance of the transition for energy security — a shift of focus from the transition's role in reducing climate change on show two years ago.
French economy minister Roland Lescure said: "In France we do not have oil, any more than in the 70s. Our major challenge with fossil fuels is to replace them."
And the "strategic answer" regarding energy dependency for France and Europe is electrification, he said. French president Emmanuel Macron yesterday described dependency on fossil fuels as a "vulnerability" for Europe.
IEA director Fatih Birol could not confirm whether the agency would maintain its net-zero scenario in its next outlook, saying it "had not thought about that yet". But the agency will keep examining emissions in each of its scenarios, he said. In the outlook published in November, the agency reinstated a "current policies" scenario, which the US welcomed.
Alongside the chair's summary, the meeting yielded a joint ministerial declaration on critical mineral supply security, which was an area of "common ground", meeting chair Hermans said.
