CLIMATE CRISIS: Members Reinforce IRENAs Position at the Heart of Geopolitics of Energy Transformation
Members Reinforce IRENAs Position at the Heart of Geopolitics of Energy Transformation
By David Matthews – Climate & Energy Correspondent
www.GEOPoliticalMatters.com
“We may never see oil demand return to 2019 levels,” said Dr. Thijs De Graaf, lead author of ‘A New World’ – an influential report published two years ago by the IRENA-convened Global Commission on the Geopolitics of the Energy Transformation, and participant at the second meeting of IRENA Collaborative Framework on the geopolitics of energy transformation.
“Oil reserves in the ground can no longer be viewed as money in the bank,” he explained, highlighting that changes witnessed so far this year to energy demand and energy use as a result of the measures enforced to control the spread of COVID-19, may have irreversibly changed the energy landscape.
Kingsmill Bond, Energy Strategist at Carbon Tracker, agreed the pandemic is likely to have brought forward the peak for fossil fuels and advanced the transition. With it, he said, investor thinking had moved from “denial, to acceptance and enthusiasm” – a message to policy makers about changing investor preferences. “Markets are a lead indictor [sic] of the change that is coming to geopolitics; ignore their message at your peril,” he said.
These observations served as a backdrop to a meeting that brought representatives from across the IRENA Membership, together with academics and energy market analysts to identify and agree areas of specific focus to guide IRENAs future work on the topic.
The discussion was co-hosted by IRENA Director-General, Francesco La Camera, Michael Klor-Berchtold, Director-General for the Department for Economic Affairs and Sustainable Development, at the Federal Foreign Office in Germany, and H.E. Dr. Nawal Al-Hosany, the UAE’s Permanent Representative to IRENA. The meeting also featured special interventions from academics and strategists. Read full report here
