The United States has told the International Energy Agency (IEA) to move away from its net zero emissions goal, with the IEA now dropping climate change from its list of priorities.
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said during the IEA’s ministerial meeting today that the U.S. would exit the organisation if it did not end its support for net zero within one year. Almost 200 countries, including the U.S., signed the IEA’s 2015 Paris Accords agreement that set out goals to reach net zero by 2050.
“There has been such a group mentality, 10 years invested in a destructive illusion of net zero by 2050, that the U.S. will use all the pressure we have to get the IEA to eventually, in the next year or so, move away from this agenda,” said Wright.
“If the IEA goes back to what it was, which was a fabulous international data reporting agency, getting into critical minerals and focusing on big energy issues, we’re all in on that. But if they insist that it’s so dominated and infused with climate stuff we’re out.”
The IEA’s chair’s summary, released after Wright’s comments, does not include climate change as a top-level priority. This is also the first time in nine years the organisation failed to release a joint communique indicating members’ shared positions.
“A large majority of Ministers stressed the importance of the energy transition to combat climate change and highlighted the global transition to net zero emissions,” the summary says in its section on energy security, the only time climate change is mentioned.
IEA members’ joint statement after the previous ministerial meeting in 2024 had listed limiting the effects of climate change as the organisation’s first priority.
The U.S. contributes around US$6 million in IEA dues each year, representing roughly 14% of the organisation’s budget. Republicans in the House of Representatives advanced a bill that would entirely halt these payments last July.
Wright’s comments also came after U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration cancelled the Environmental Protection Agency’s ‘endangerment finding’ last week, a scientific assessment that acted as the legal basis for many rules limiting emissions from cars and power plants. This move eliminated all greenhouse gas standards for cars and trucks in the U.S.
