U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright gave the International Energy Agency on Thursday a one-year deadline to scrap its support of goals to reduce energy emissions to net zero or risk losing the United States as a member.
European countries played down the threat at the agency’s biennial meeting and restated their commitment to pursuing cleaner fuel.
In 2015 the U.S. and nearly 200 other countries signed the Paris Accords, an international pledge to limit global warming by burning less oil, gas and coal, with a goal of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions 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,” Wright said.
