United States’ Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, on Friday gave an ultimatum to the International Energy Agency (IEA) to stop net zero emissions goals or lose the membership of the country.
European countries had played the threat down at the agency’s last biennial meeting held in Paris and restated their commitment to pursuing cleaner fuel.
The Paris-based IEA was formed after the 1970s oil supply crisis and provides research and data to the U.S. and other industrialized countries to guide energy policy.
Reuters reported that the U.S had paid about $6 million (5.10 million euros) per year in IEA dues, out of a total agency budget of $22 million.
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The online medium quoted the IEA Director, Fatih Birol, as declining to comment on the mandate from the U.S. to remove the net zero scenario from the agency’s annual World Energy Outlook forecast, but said the agency’s data was respected globally as reliable.
For a bit of context, in 2015 the U.S. and nearly 200 other countries signed the Paris Accords, an international pledge to limit global warming by burning less oil, gas and coal, with a goal of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
It’s one of the many anti-environmental policies pursued by President Donald Trump’s Republican administration this week.
Trump has rejected international efforts to frontally address global warming and sought to unfetter the development of fossil fuels and stymie the rollout of renewable energy.
In a related development, the Trump administration today also announced that it will roll back air regulations for power plants limiting mercury and hazardous air toxics.
It maintained that the measure would boost baseload energy but public health groups differ, saying the move will harm public health for America’s most vulnerable groups.
However, Trump’s EPA argued that easing the pollution standards for coal plants would alleviate costs for utilities that run older coal plants at a time when demand for power is soaring amid the expansion of data centers used for artificial intelligence.
