Global efforts to minimise the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic present an historic opportunity to scale up the technologies needed to speed a transition to cleaner energy, the head of the world’s energy watchdog says. Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said support from governments could drive rapid growth in battery and hydrogen technology to help the world to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels.
After weeks of extraordinary turmoil in oil markets, the IEA – created to ensure steady energy supplies to industrialised countries after the oil crisis in the early 1970s – has emerged as a leading proponent of “green recoveries” from the pandemic. But he also wants governments to consider offering promising technologies the kind of subsidy and policy support that have helped to propel spectacular growth in wind and solar power from a low base over the past decade.
Although rollouts of cleaner technologies will be needed to meet energy demand, climate scientists say that the world must also reverse plans to expand oil, gas and coal production to stand a chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change. Last year climate scientists, campaigners and the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, which comprises pension funds and insurers managing more than 30 trillion euros ($32.6 trillion) in assets, wrote letters to the IEA to ask it to produce more ambitious decarbonisation pathways to boost climate-friendly investment.
Source: Trust
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