European leaders expressed growing defiance Wednesday toward the Trump administration’s efforts to stymie messaging about climate change by the world’s premier energy organization.
It came a day after Energy Secretary Chris Wright threatened to quit the International Energy Agency for including “climate stuff” in its data analyses for renewables, fossil fuels and global carbon emissions.
The international dispute over the benefits of shifting away from fossil fuels and the dangers of climate change — which President Donald Trump described last week as a “giant scam” — unfolded as ministers from around the world met at the IEA’s headquarters in Paris to discuss global energy.
The scene punctuated the United States’ desire to expand fossil fuels at a time when many European nations have sought to balance their energy needs by investing in wind and solar power, in addition to natural gas — where its supplies increasingly come from the United States.
“Investors who think in the long term all make the same choice: nuclear, renewables, storage, smart grids. This is the choice of the 21st century, because fundamentally, no one wants to live on a planet at plus 4 degrees Celsius,” French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday in a video address at the start of the IEA meeting.
Ed Miliband, the United Kingdom’s energy secretary, said clean energy is “the most secure and affordable” way to meet rising energy demand, cut countries’ dependence on imported fuels and meet “critical climate targets.”
Those comments came in the wake of Wright calling on the IEA to abandon what he described as “left-wing, big government fantasies.”
The IEA’s regular analyses on oil, gas, renewables and other energy technologies can move markets and guide investment decisions. But the Trump administration has criticized the agency’s past outlooks for projecting that fossil fuel demand would peak around 2030.
On Wednesday, Wright told the organization to drop its modeling for net-zero emissions, which show how the world could limit global warming to the 1.5 degree Celsius goal of the Paris Agreement. To achieve those results, the agency envisions plunging fossil fuel use and skyrocketing renewable energy installations — both of which go against Trump’s agenda.
European leaders pushed back by highlighting how clean energy can help curb the dangers of a warming world and provide them more autonomy. It came after Trump has railed against Europe’s efforts to expand clean energy, pressured countries to drop a carbon tax on shipping and threatened to take Greenland.
At the Munich Security Conference over the weekend, Secretary of State Marco Rubio blasted what he called a “climate cult” in Europe that he said had imposed energy policies that are “impoverishing our people.” Wright has called nations’ efforts to zero out their emissions — a key part of achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement — a “crazy, bad idea.”
Macron addressed those sentiments head-on Wednesday, saying countries should work together to achieve net zero.
“We know there are many levers available today to get there, but an orderly, progressive and just transition away from fossil fuels is the key,” he said. “This is the path that Europe has chosen.”
Off stage, Austria’s energy secretary, Elisabeth Zehetner, told POLITICO that Europe wouldn’t be “blackmailed” by the Trump administration’s opposition to clean energy, saying the U.S. was forfeiting economic opportunities by focusing on oil, gas and coal.
When Trump announced last month that the U.S. was leaving the 1992 climate treaty that underpins global efforts to cut planet-warming pollution, many leaders in Europe stood by silently.
But as risks to the European Union’s security and sovereignty have crystallized amid Trump’s threats to annex Greenland, they’re increasingly standing up to U.S. attacks against their clean energy priorities.
The EU’s energy commissioner, Dan Jørgensen, has warned of security risks from the bloc’s growing reliance on U.S. liquefied natural gas as it replaces imports from Russia.
After Trump quipped last month in Davos, Switzerland, that wind turbines are for losers, ministers from the U.K. and several other European nations gathered in Hamburg, Germany, and agreed to jointly deliver 100 gigawatts of offshore wind.
Miliband, in a direct jab at Trump’s statement, countered at the Hamberg meeting that wind is “for winners.”
“As much as the U.S. administration would like to think that by speaking louder at the IEA ministerial it can shift the mindsets of European governments, techno-economic facts about the energy transition are more and more clearly pointing to a future energy system that is based around electricity and renewable,” said Jules Kortenhorst, co-chair of the Energy Transitions Commission, a coalition focused on the economic shift away from fossil fuels.
Some European climate policies have not worked, said Jonathan Elkind, a fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and a former Department of Energy official who worked on international issues.
“But the idea that climate isn’t and shouldn’t be part of what the IEA pays attention to is a point that the vast majority of IEA members would not agree with,” he said. “A number of them are saying the climate and other sustainability impacts associated with energy are part of how they think about durable, sure-footed, long-term policy choices.”
Last year, the IEAbrought back a scenario it had abandoned in 2020 showing that fossil fuel use would increase for decades to come. It also retained its net-zero scenario and one that foresees oil peaking around 2030.
The pivot stemmed from the IEA’s examination of data, said Fatih Birol, who leads the organization, adding that its credibility comes from quantifying trends, not by supporting political positions. That’s also why the IEA estimates large growth in technologies such as solar, wind, hydropower and nuclear.
“Being data-driven, being neutral, doesn’t mean we don’t take sides,” Birol said Wednesday. “We take the side of secure energy, we take the side of affordable energy, we take the side of sustainable energy for all.”
