PARIS — U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Tuesday threatened to pull America out of the International Energy Agency, whose work on deploying renewables conflicts with the pro-fossil-fuel policy of the Trump administration.
“If a large part of data reporting agencies devote themselves to these kinds of leftist fantasies … that can only distort their mission,” Wright told a early-evening conference at the French Institute of International Relations in Paris.
Accusing the IEA of behaving like a “climate advocacy organization,” Wright urged it to focus on “energy security.”
Founded in 1974 in the wake of the first oil crisis of that decade, the Paris-based IEA produces forward-looking scenarios documenting the transition to renewable fuels that set the standard for the energy world. Wright will be in Paris on Wednesday and Thursday to attend a ministerial meeting of the agency.
