International Energy Agency (IEA) Executive Director Fatih Birol yesterday faced renewed pressure to overhaul the organization’s influential projections for fossil fuel demand from investors and scientists concerned about climate change.
Pension funds, insurers and large companies were among 65 signatories of a joint letter to Birol, seen by reporters, urging him to do more to support the implementation of the 2015 Paris Agreement to avert catastrophic global warming.
“The year 2020 marks a turning point for the world — the year when we either grasp the challenges and opportunities before us, or continue delaying and obstructing the low-carbon transformation,” the letter said.
The letter represented the first coordinated response by investors, scientists and campaigners pushing Birol to rethink the Paris-based organization’s flagship annual World Energy Outlook since the latest edition was launched on Wednesday.
The Outlook, which runs to hundreds of pages, helps shape expectations in financial markets over how quickly the world could transition from a fossil fuel-dominated energy system to cleaner sources of power.
Since the start of this year, various networks of institutional investors, asset owners, scientists and climate advocacy groups have been urging Birol to change the way the report is produced and presented.
These critics argue that a revised approach could help unlock faster investment in renewables and better identify possible risks to the value of oil, gas and coal companies posed by the prospect of rapid action to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The IEA made several changes to the new edition of the Outlook, including providing what officials describe as a more “stringent” scenario showing how the world could fully achieve the goals of the Paris deal than in the previous edition.
In interviews with Reuters this month, Birol and other senior IEA officials argued that the criticism of the outlook was misplaced, saying it was based on misunderstandings of how its scenarios work and what they aim to demonstrate.
Birol also emphasized that the IEA’s wide-ranging work on topics from energy efficiency to offshore wind played an important role in boosting international efforts to tackle climate change.
Nevertheless, in the letter, signatories described the new elements in the latest report as “minor improvements” that should not be mistaken for delivering “urgently needed substantial changes.”
The signatories said they wanted the IEA to produce what they would consider a “fully transparent” scenario showing how the world could meet the most ambitious Paris accord goals.
That would include reliably limiting the rise in average global temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial times without banking on early stage technologies to suck carbon from the air, and reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
The signatories want their vision for what would qualify as such a scenario to be the centerpiece of the next report.
German insurer Allianz, Switzerland’s Zurich Insurance Group, and Danish fund PensionDanmark confirmed that they had signed the letter. Other signatories shown on a copy of the letter seen by reporters include Unilever, IKEA, Nordea Life & Pension and Orsted.
Climate scientists based in the US, Britain and Germany, former UN Framework Convention on Climate Change executive secretary Christiana Figueres and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet also signed.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of