As countries make plans to ramp up their NDCs, they need a 1.5°C scenario to help them chart a course away from fossil fuels. On Tuesday evening, the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Executive Director Fatih Birol took to the plenary stage for the Energy Day Ministerial meeting. Energy ministers from around the world shared the (still largely inadequate) actions their countries are taking to decarbonize the energy sector.
Sadly, right now, the IEA is fueling inadequate levels of ambition. The IEA has rebuffed growing calls to develop a 1.5°C scenario. Instead, the IEA, in its scenarios, prolongs our dependence on fossil fuels — especially fossil gas. It’s so-called Paris-aligned scenario only reaches net-zero by 2070, at least 20 years too late. The IEA’s World Energy Outlook (WEO) is frequently used to justify major new fossil fuel infrastructure, including coal in Australia, tar sands in Canada, fracking in the Permian, and offshore drilling in the Arctic. All of these new developments are incompatible with 1.5°C.
“Energy decision-makers need to make hard decisions… The aim is not to increase our egos, but to decrease our energy emissions,” said Birol. ECO couldn’t agree more. Now it is time for the IEA to put egos aside and heed the science, the needs of its own members, the growing calls from the financial community and the climate movement and create a 1.5°C scenario.
On Thursday, a civil society coalition interrupted an IEA side-event to deliver a petition signed by 12,000 people demanding that the IEA create a 1.5°C-compatible scenario. Their voices were amplified by leaders within the halls of IFEMA.
“1.5℃is no paradise for the world’s most vulnerable countries. It is a compromise that will still cost lives and livelihoods,” said Renato Redentor Constantino, advisor to the Climate Vulnerable Forum. “There should be no question that a 1.5℃ scenario should be the centerpiece of the World Energy Outlook. It is what we have all agreed on in the Paris Agreement, and it is a matter of life and death. The IEA is a tool of wealthy, developed countries that talk a big game on climate, and it is high time that they step up.”
“Climate science clearly tells us we needed to drop fossil fuels yesterday. And in the Permian Basin where I live, it’s not just climate. Oil and gas expansion harms our health with toxic air pollution, our property with earthquakes, and our lives with explosions. In every sense, the Permian is a carbon bomb, and rather than defusing it, the IEA is holding the match,” warned Lori Glover, Earthworks organizer & longtime Permian resident.
If the IEA and Energy Ministers start taking 1.5º seriously — as a life-or-death limit — ECO is confident that they’d STOP excusing and permitting new fossil fuel infrastructure; get moving on the necessary transition to 100% renewable, regenerative economy; and cast off false solutions like “cleaner” fossil fuels. If we don’t start planning for the energy transition needed for 1.5°C right now, then the challenge will only grow steeper, imperiling our chances to manage it in a fair and just way.