PARIS, Feb. 15 — The International Energy Agency (IEA) vowed Wednesday to “continue to put climate change and sustainable development along with energy security at the centre of its activities and analysis.”
The 31-member IEA pledged in a joint communique issued after a ministerial meeting, which coincided with the bloc’s 50th anniversary, reported Xinhua.
The ministers recognised the significant focus on energy in the outcomes of the COP28 Climate Change Conference in Dubai, where nearly 200 governments reached a key agreement on energy and climate issues and urged the IEA to take a leading role in ensuring their implementation.
“We call upon the IEA to continue to track and report our delivery against key commitments, identifying barriers to progress, and providing members and the wider global community with recommendations on how to accelerate our national secure, clean energy transitions,” said the ministers.
They also mandated the start of discussions with India in response to the Indian government’s request for full IEA membership in October 2023. India joined the IEA as an association country in 2017.
On Tuesday, the IEA ministers and the Singaporean government announced that the IEA’s first office outside its Paris headquarters will start operations in Singapore in the second half of 2024 to increase the agency’s engagement and impact across Southeast Asia and beyond.
“The IEA has received clear mandates from its members. We will redouble our efforts to lead the fight against climate change in the energy sector while ensuring the security of global energy supplies and working to increase energy access throughout the transition,” said IEA executive director Fatih Birol.
In a video message, French President Emmanuel Macron emphasised that the IEA has been able to profoundly shift its mandate since its creation in 1974, from an agency dedicated to managing strategic oil reserves to “a global hub for debate and collective action to meet the challenge of the energy transition.”
Ministers at the meeting noted the continued importance of oil supply security to the global economy and underlined the key role played by the IEA’s oil stockholding system.
They also directed the IEA to develop a framework to advance the objectives that have been laid out for a voluntary IEA Critical Minerals Security Programme, which would look to boost the security of supply chains for the crucial minerals needed for clean energy technologies.
— Bernama
