Oil crisis fuels calls to speed up clean energy transition

PARIS: The oil crisis triggered by the Middle East war has underscored the need for the world to accelerate the clean energy transition, the COP31 president-designate and the UN’s climate chief said Thursday.

Crude prices have soared since the United States and Israel launched the war against Iran in late February and Tehran closed the Strait of Hormuz in response. That has fuelled calls for the world to ditch its reliance on fossil fuels.

“The fossil fuel cost crisis now has its foot on the throat of the global economy,” Stiell said at a meeting on the energy transition hosted by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris.

“From this tragedy, an immense irony is unfolding. Those who’ve fought to keep the world hooked on fossil fuels are inadvertently supercharging the global renewables boom,” he said, without naming countries or companies.

The Paris meeting was being held in the lead-up to the UN’s COP31 climate summit in Antalya, Turkey, in November.

Diplomats and representatives from banks, oil firms and renewable energy companies attended the talks.

“The world is facing the biggest energy crisis in its history today,” COP31 president-designate Murat Kurum said.

“We now know clearly that the global economy must transform its energy paradigm,” said Kurum, who is also Turkey’s climate minister.

“And the most critical step is to accelerate the transition to clean energy,” he added.

IEA chief Fatih Birol said oil prices, which topped $126 per barrel on Thursday, were “putting a lot of pressure in many countries”.

“Our world is facing a major energy and economic challenge,” said Birol, adding that his agency, which advises its member countries on energy policy, was monitoring the situation.

‘Real momentum’

The talks in Paris came as nearly 60 nations hailed progress at the end of a conference in Colombia aimed at speeding the shift away from planet-heating fossil fuels and break a stalemate on the issue at UN climate talks.

The Santa Marta conference was announced last year after nations failed to include an explicit reference to fossil fuels in the final deal reached at the UN COP30 climate summit in Brazil.

“Coalitions of the willing are already forging ahead,” Stiell said, pointing to the gathering in Colombia.

“In key sectors right across the action agenda, COP31 in Turkey will provide a global stage to pick up the pace,” he said. “We must seize this moment. We have no time to lose.”

Stiell said that countries rich in renewables, such as Spain and Pakistan, had been shielded from the worst impacts of the fossil fuel cost crisis.

“Renewables offer safer, cheaper, cleaner energy that can’t be held captive by narrow shipping straits, or global conflicts,” Stiell said.

“That’s why so many governments are pushing renewables plans into overdrive: to restore national security, economic stability, competitiveness, policy autonomy and basic sovereignty,” he added.

China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Germany, the UK, and others have been “clear that pushing forward with the renewables transition is a cornerstone of energy security”, he added.

“This is real momentum,” Stiell said. “We must harness it to accelerate a truly global shift.”