For decades, the terms “energy transition,” “peak oil,” and “bridge fuel” (in reference to natural gas) have been treated as gospel by market analysts, politicians, and activists. Basing their predictions on international promises and assumptions of “green” energy innovation, users of these terms have neglected to question whether their vision of a future without natural gas, oil, and coal can actually exist without enormous costs.
International organizations such as the United Nations and the International Energy Agency have fueled the flames of this delusion. Yearly U.N. Climate Change Conferences seek to address the “climate crisis,” and the IEA’s World Energy Outlooks have given them the tools to do so, providing Net Zero Emissions by 2050 and Announced Pledges Scenarios that provide a pathway for the world to reach its “green” goals. Since 2015, the IEA has worked to “deepen cooperation in … the growing use of clean energy technologies,” expanding beyond its 1974 original mission to “co-ordinate a collective response to major disruptions in the supply of oil.”
However, the events of COP30 and the IEA’s findings have given these stock phrases a much-needed dose of realism. After over two weeks of negotiations, COP30 ended in Brazil without any road map for weaning the world off fossil fuels, while also pushing back climate adaptation financing timelines five years to 2035.
As COP30 was ongoing, the IEA released its 2025 version of the WEO, which included a Current Policies Scenario for the first time since 2020. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright deserves credit for the IEA dropping the APS in favor of the CPS, stating in July that the U.S. would “do one of two things: we will reform the way the IEA operates or we will withdraw.”
Since 2020, WEOs have focused on projecting future energy demand based on improbable assumptions in their APS and Net Zero Scenarios. These scenarios are not just harmless theoreticals; they’re guidelines on how to upend existing energy markets in alignment with centrally planned governmental climate goals, regardless of the costs imposed on everyday people through rising prices and grid instability.
The APS makes bold assumptions about future compliance with climate goals, aiming to “show how close current pledges get the world to the target of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C.” In contrast, CPS, which was discontinued during the COVID-19 pandemic, “relies only on measures that are formally written into existing legislation and regulation, and which does not consider any additional changes to policy, even where governments have announced an intention to enact them,” replacing speculation with empiricism.
Notably, the WEO’s CPS found that oil demand could reach 113 million barrels per day — increasing by 13% — by 2050 and that the liquefied natural gas market could nearly double from 560 billion cubic meters in 2024 to 1,020 billion cubic meters by 2050. These increases are essential to meeting growing energy demand, which the WEO views as rising by 90 exajoules in 2035, a 15% increase from today. Alongside the results of COP30, the data reflect the shifting political consensus away from the net-zero doctrine toward recognizing that affordability and reliability should remain the cardinal values in energy policy.
Barring any major changes in technology that border on science fiction, the world won’t be able to meet the energy needs of the future without oil and natural gas. Because of their intermittency and unreliability, solar and wind additions to grids duplicate existing and new reliable generation, raising capital costs through new and repetitive investment in transmission, distribution, and batteries.
BLAME DEMOCRATS, NOT DATA CENTERS, FOR RISING ELECTRICITY PRICES
Considering that the U.S. provides 14% of the IEA’s total budget, Wright was correct to question whether the U.S. should be complicit in funding the research of far-out energy transition scenarios, thereby providing false hope to opponents of fossil fuels. As the Manhattan Institute’s Mark P. Mills argues, “Whatever one thinks about its goals, as an advocate the IEA is not constitutionally capable of operating as a disinterested player because it is now by animated hopes rather than by analyzing realities.”
Replacing the APS with CPS is a good step in favor of reorienting the agency from energy transition advocacy toward its original mission of providing reliable information on global energy. It remains to be seen, however, whether the organization will continue moving away from providing pathways for a “green” energy takeover, which will likely determine the Trump administration’s approach.
William Rampe is a policy analyst at the Institute for Energy Research.
