War on green transition: US threatens to pull out of IEA

US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright has urged the International Energy Agency (IEA) to focus on energy security rather than promoting renewables and warned that the United States could withdraw from the organization. The IEA’s support for the green energy transition conflicts with the pro-fossil fuel policy of the current US administration, according to Politico.

Speaking at a conference in Paris, Wright accused the IEA of behaving like a “climate advocacy organization” and said the world did not need a net-zero scenario. “That’s ridiculous, that’s never going to happen,” he claimed.

“If a large part of data reporting agencies devote themselves to these kinds of leftist fantasies … that can only distort their mission,” Wright said, as quoted by Politico.

Wright’s comments echo those of other US officials and President Trump

Wright’s comments echo those of President Donald Trump and officials from his administration. He withdrew the US from the Paris climate agreement for a second time in January this year. Trump also rolled back much of the previous administration’s climate policy.

At the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos in January, US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said that America should rely on oil and natural gas instead of pursuing a green transition.

The US commerce secretary said in Davos that his country should rely on oil and natural gas

Lutnick criticized the European Union’s solar and wind deployment, as well as its net-zero goal, adding that the energy transition was not something the US should pursue. He also said that the world should focus on coal as an energy source rather than renewables.

For his part, Trump also criticized the EU’s transition to renewables, claiming the US had avoided “the catastrophic energy collapse which befell every European nation that pursued the green new scam.”