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Energy Secretary Chris Wright blasted European leaders in Paris on Tuesday, accusing the International Energy Agency of pushing “net zero” policies divorced from reality and warning the continent to abandon its green agenda or face economic catastrophe.
Wright’s comments before the 31-member global forum in Paris come just after Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered rousing speeches warning European leaders of the pitfalls of their current governing trajectory.
“This organization has been pushed off course, and for five years published energy scenarios going forward, none of which had any relevance to reality,” Wright said in video obtained by Digital from an administration source.
“They were all just based on climate ambitions, politics, local domestic politics, do whatever you want,” he said.
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Energy Secretary Chris Wright speaks at the International Energy Agency in France this week. (Ana Lopez/Getty Images)
The Paris-based IEA was founded after the 1974 global oil crisis as an alliance focused on oil supply security but has shifted in recent years toward green energy and climate policy.
“If the European industrial powers want to continue to become ‘former industrial powers,’ that’s your choice. I don’t think it’s a great choice, but that is your choice.”
Wright said the energy policies of many Western governments have little grounding in the realistic demands of their citizens, power grids and national security needs.
He said nearly every IEA report mentions a “Net Zero by 2050” case.
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“There is a zero percent chance of the world hitting ‘Net Zero 2050’.”
He said attempts by states and nations to comply with that goal have not made them stronger or more energy-rich but instead have resulted in a collective $10 trillion expenditure to add about 2.6% of wind, solar and battery-powered energy to the global transmission grid.
Wright went on to say that jurisdictions that have deployed such strict green standards have seen electricity rates skyrocket, pointing to test cases within the U.S. itself.
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“Every state within the renewable portfolio standard, on average, [has] 50% higher electricity prices than the other states that didn’t adopt that.”
“We don’t want to move industries out of Europe. We don’t want to make life more expensive and impoverish our people. We don’t want to have two million people still dying because they don’t have clean cooking fuel. We want to better energize the world – that’s what the IEA was founded for.”
Wright credited IEA Director Fatih Birol of Turkey with appearing to take a “step in the right direction” in his latest published policy scenario after what the secretary described as five years detached “from reality.”
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He said that “climate-political stuff” should be saved for politicians, not energy policymakers, and voiced hope that the IEA and its member nations would see the error of their ways and return to what energy policy should be about: “Humans – and math.”
Digital reached out to the IEA for comment.
