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Business leaders from the energy sector have come together in Davos to discuss navigating the rocky path ahead for global energy systems.
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The Head of the IEA, Fatih Birol, headed up the panel in the ‘Mastering New Energy Economics’ session.
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Here are some of the key quotes from the leaders on tackling the energy crisis, while building in sustainability for a clean energy future.
The world is in the midst of the first “truly global energy crisis”, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its World Energy Outlook in October 2022.
It’s multidimensional – it’s about more than the world’s reliance on natural gas from Russia. It’s about global energy security, fuelling the transition to clean energy for the climate and the interconnection between the energy crisis and food security.
For the first time in a decade, the number of people without access to modern energy is growing, says the IEA. Some 75 million people who have only just got access to electricity may no longer be able to afford it, while 100 million people may need to return to cooking using biomass.
In April, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that meeting the Paris Agreement target of keeping warming to 1.5°C would require emissions to “peak before 2025 at the latest” and drop by 43% by 2030.
But addressing emissions also represents an opportunity for the green economy. Those industries helping the world shift to net-zero emissions could be worth $10.3 trillion to the global economy by 2050, according to sustainable development consultancy Arup and economics advisory firm Oxford Economics.
The challenge facing the energy sector today is how to redesign the entire system while maintaining an affordable, resilient supply that’s sustainable for the planet.
How gas import bills rose in 2022 and how emissions must come down. Image: IEA
Energy leaders came together to discuss the outlook for 2023 at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos in January, in a panel session titled Mastering New Energy Economics.
Facilitating the session was CNN Anchor Julia Chatterley and the speakers were: Fatih Birol, Executive Director, International Energy Agency; Vicki Hollub, President and Chief Executive Officer, Occidental Petroleum Corporation; Patricia K. Poppe, Chief Executive Officer, PG&E; Martin Wolf, Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator, the Financial Times and Jozef Sikela, Minister of Industry and Trade, Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic.
