BAKU, Azerbaijan, Dec.2. The world should both respond to the energy crisis and tackle the climate crisis, Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said in his remarks in the Scramble for Energy report of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Trend reports.
“The global energy crisis is fueling fierce debate around the world over which new energy projects should or shouldn’t go ahead. Conversations about energy and investment often fail to take into account the considerable lag between investment decisions and when projects actually go live. At the International Energy Agency (IEA), we warned years ago that global investment in clean energy and energy efficiency was not sufficient to put us on a path to reach our climate goals. Without a surge in clean energy spending, the amounts invested in conventional energy projects also risked falling short of what would be needed to meet potential increases in demand,” he said.
Birol says the world must still pay close attention to these underlying investment imbalances “as we emerge from the crisis, or we risk more volatility ahead.”
He notes that the situation in Ukraine has thrown investment plans across all energy sectors into turmoil and exacerbated strains in global commodity markets that were already visible.
“Energy-importing countries are now scrambling to replace disrupted supplies of fuels, and soaring costs have wreaked havoc in many economies and forced millions of people back into poverty and energy insecurity. Of course, countries need to find immediate substitutes for the fuel imports that were suddenly cut off. If not, factories will close, jobs will be lost, and people will struggle to heat or cool their homes.
But today’s energy crisis—the first truly global energy crisis—has given rise to a false narrative that now is not the moment to invest in clean energy. This could not be further from the truth. We do not have to choose between responding to today’s energy crisis and tackling the climate crisis. Not only can we do both, we must do both because they are intimately linked. Massive investment in clean energy—including energy efficiency, renewables, electrification, and a range of clean fuels—is the best guarantee of energy security in the future and will also drive down harmful greenhouse gas emissions,” added IEA’s executive director.
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