Read the latest insights and analysis from the experts at Oil Change International.
A letter from leading businesses, scientists and activists demands “bold, not incremental, action" is required from the International Energy Agency on climate change. Hopefully, Dr. Birol and the IEA are listening. For all our futures may depend on their report next month.
There’s a battle taking place over how we think our energy future will unfold. And tomorrow, the organization that arguably holds a near monopoly over how most decision-makers perceive this future – the International Energy Agency (IEA) – will release its latest volley.
The oil companies go to great efforts to portray their forecasts as works of objective analysis of the future. They are not - they are self-serving descriptions of the futures the companies would like policymakers and investors to believe in.
Today was supposed to be the official launch of the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Annual Energy Outlook (AEO). Just a few hours ago the EIA's site stated that it would be released today, but apparently among the things that EIA can't predict is the launch date for it's big annual report. When it is published, now supposedly at the "end of July", this report should contain the kind of hard data that energy regulators and investors desperately need to gain an accurate picture of energy in the United States today, and for the next 50 years. Except it won’t.
An enduring aspect of the EIA’s lack of attention to the urgency of the climate crisis is the lack of a projection of U.S. and/or global energy supply and demand that reflects the nation’s stated commitments to address climate change.
The Energy Information Administration should help, not hinder, policymaking on the energy transition - a critique of the International Energy Outlook 2016
Would you take it seriously if tobacco companies announced that smoking trends weren’t expected to change much over the next 30 years? And imagine then, that this is what governments used to make tobacco policy: “Forecasts show that people aren’t going to quit smoking, steady rates of smoking around the world are inevitable, so all anti-smoking policies will assume not much is going to change.”
