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By Grant Smith
The International Energy Agency, the west’s energy watchdog, is considering reviving one of its long-term energy demand scenarios after criticism from US Republican leaders.
The IEA’s decision in 2020 to exclude the so-called Current Policies Scenario from its reports prompted accusations that the agency was letting its commitment to net zero climate goals distort its demand forecasting methods.
“Our modeling team is currently in the early stages of putting together the next edition of the World Energy Outlook, which will be released in late 2025,” the Paris-based agency said in a statement on Friday. “As always, it will include a range of scenarios, and the Current Policies Scenario is one of those under consideration.”
Last March, US Republican leaders wrote a letter to IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol, blaming the agency’s outlook as a factor in the Biden administration’s decision to halt new licenses for exports of liquefied natural gas. The letter, which asked the agency to revert to a more “neutral” scenario, was signed by John Barrasso, the top Republican on the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers, chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
The IEA — created after the 1970s Arab oil embargo to improve energy security — had defended its methodology earlier that year. It contended that its new base-case, the Stated Policies Scenario, or STEPS, was needed to “reflect what is in law and in the pipeline, and what is the delivery mechanism that each government has in place, and what they can deliver.”
President Donald Trump has made his long-term skepticism to climate change targets clear, withdrawing the US from the Paris Climate Agreement and rolling back more than a dozen executive actions on the environment — including barriers to oil and gas drilling — on his first day in office.
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