A sober appreciation for the tradeoffs implicit in far-flung net-zero goals is desperately needed. If a just energy evolution is to occur, it won’t be a result of top-down mandates that impede developing nations’ sovereignty and limit the range of energy options available for consumers. It must be a product of innovative solutions, tailored to different regions’ unique needs and priorities, with the ultimate goal of enhancing living standards for people around the world.
Today, society faces two unique and pivotal challenges as it attempts to meet the net-zero goals outlined in the Paris Agreement. First, there is a global need to limit emissions. Second, the vast benefits of energy still haven’t reached significant portions of the world: more than 3.5 billion people lack access to reliable electricity and more than two billion can’t yet utilize clean cooking fuels. To tackle both of these simultaneously, world leaders have stated their ambitions to pursue an energy “transition” that prioritizes reducing emissions while continuing to buildout more energy production. At face value, there are few goals more worthy.
Unfortunately, these agendas often lose touch with reality. Most notably, over the past several years the International Energy Agency (IEA) has increasingly pressured the world to abandon fossil fuels by presenting misleading reports that characterize the road to net-zero as clear-cut. But even the agency’s roadmaps provide little clarity on how to make this massive shift possible. Rather, their reports simply assume that developing nations will adopt nascent technologies, and their citizens will voluntarily reduce their energy consumption, because international actors have decided that this is the plan.
To staunch proponents of climate action, the IEA’s approach may not seem like a problematic way of effecting change. But to the billions that lack access to affordable energy, this method of bringing about an energy transition is deeply harmful. If we move away from fossil fuels by pricing out developing nations from access to traditional energy sources, we artificially limit the energy supply available to consumers who need it to improve living standards.
The effects of this policy are already starting to take shape, and they are disproportionately impacting the most energy-vulnerable areas. While financial institutions continue to invest in oil and natural gas projects in the global north, they’re pulling out of new projects in the global south, overruling the prerogatives of nations seeking out abundant and affordable energy to fuel economic growth and improve living standards. For example, last month the Financial Times noted that major banks BNP Paribas and Barclays cited IEA forecasts in their respective decisions to cease financing new oil and gas field development—most of which is occurring in the Global South.
Behind this strategy is an implicit decision by a few that meeting climate goals is more important than addressing energy needs or enabling emerging economies’ growth. But the architects of this approach have never suffered from energy poverty. Thus, it’s understandable that policymakers in Brussels and Paris default to armchair theorizing about abstract emissions goals and take for granted their energy-abundant lifestyles.
Comments from the IEA’s Chief Faith Birol last month perfectly illustrate this phenomenon. In an exchange at the Norwegian ONS Foundation 2024 conference last month, Birol quipped to CEO Patrick Pouyanne that TotalEnergies should feel “guilty” about its liquified petroleum gas projects in Africa, which are set to provide clean cooking fuel alternatives to reduce the 2.5 million deaths that occur every year from cooking with coal, biomass, and other toxic fuels.
Interestingly, in the IEA’s report, “A Vision for Clean Cooking For All,” natural gas and liquified petroleum gas (LPG) are ranked among the cleanest sources of cooking fuel. Their own plan states that if we can supply natural gas or LPG to the majority of the 2.3 billion people that lack access to clean fuels by 2030, we would not only significantly improve their life expectancy but also achieve significant emissions reductions.
The IEA also notes that the increase of LPG in Sub-Saharan Africa alone will require increased distribution, infrastructure and “investment in upstream capacity across the continent.” But where will the demand for these clean cooking solutions be sourced and financed?
Birol’s ambition to reduce global emissions from energy usage is a laudable one, but so is TotalEnergies’ effort to provide millions of people with cleaner and safer cooking fuels. These should not be mutually exclusive goals.
Fundamentally, it is not the place of the IEA or any international institution to use guilt and moralizing to force only one of these goals and in turn dissuade companies, investors, and independent nations from pursuing the policy changes that have the greatest benefit to people’s livelihoods. Developing and emerging economies must be the ones to make decisions about their energy future with these costs and benefits in mind, not technocrats.