Top US Energy Official Lobbies for Fossil Fuels in Europe – Inside Climate News

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright is in Europe this week to lobby for oil and gas, and some European policy experts say his pro-fossil fuel arguments are based on disinformation, including a misleading climate report his department published this summer.

On September 9 and 10, Wright is visiting the GasTech conference in Milan, Italy, to participate in a fireside chat and press conference and then traveling on to European Union headquarters in Brussels and to Vienna for the annual conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency. 

In a press release, the U.S. Department of Energy touted the trip as a chance “to strengthen long-lasting partnerships and encourage countries to join the United States as President Trump builds an energy secure and prosperous future.” 

A report, released by the department in July, downplayed the deadly impacts of global warming and ignored the overwhelming scientific consensus on the need to cut fossil fuel emissions. Dozens of climate scientists concluded that the report was “fundamentally incorrect.”

European climate experts are wary of the U.S. government’s pro-fossil fuel policies and said they doubted the efforts by Wright would result in any significant changes to European climate and energy policy.

“I think it’s very easy to say that what the current U.S. government is doing is de facto climate disinformation,” said Petter Lydén, head of international climate policy for Germanwatch, an independent development, environmental and human rights NGO. “I’m obviously coming from a European perspective, but it’s clear that what they’re saying is not true.”

For example, a growing European social and political narrative that U.S. fossil gas is “saving” Europe’s energy supply is flawed, German energy economist Claudia Kemfert and co-authors wrote in a peer-reviewed journal article published in late August. The narrative is based on misconceptions that lead to “highly controversial” overcapacities for fossil gas production and transport in both exporting and importing countries, the authors wrote, describing the U.S. attempts to keep growing the fossil gas bubble economy.

Climate disinformation isn’t about expressing an opinion. “In cases like this, it’s about power,” said Philip Newell, an information integrity expert with the Global Strategic Communications Council, a collaborative network of communications professionals in the fields of climate, energy and nature.

He said disinformation is “peer pressure or bullying. When you look at surveys of the public, the overwhelming majority want climate action, but when you ask them, everyone thinks only a minority of people want climate action,” he said.

He said the real impact of disinformation is not that it makes people think they are wrong, but that it can make them feel like they are alone. “Then, you don’t demand action because it feels like a losing cause instead of a popular one,” he said.

Unwelcome Intervention

Lydén, who has participated in global climate negotiations for more than 20 years, said the U.S. administration’s attempts to influence Europe’s climate and energy policies are “not a welcome intervention on this continent,” other than with some extremist political parties and a small number of countries pursuing fossil-fueled agendas similar to those of the current U.S. administration, he added.

“I just read that Chris Wright has been saying that countries in Europe should not pursue the transition, but instead join ‘Team Energy Freedom,’” he said. “We are not used to this simplistic, populist language … It may resonate with a few, but it’s dangerous. And it’s also condescending to European voters who debate these issues on a different level than in the U.S.”

When the wrangling over energy policy is translated into hard trade policy—such as tariffs or the conditions of committing to buying American fossil fuels—then it has an impact on the energy transition in Europe by “unnecessarily” locking in the use of fossil fuels and their infrastructure, Lyden said. 

The U.S. fossil fuel policy also resonates with the global fossil fuel industry, said Reinhard Steuerer, a political scientist and climate policy expert at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) in Vienna.

“Of course, Big Oil around the world is happy about climate denial ruling in the U.S., and about rolling back climate ambitions across Europe,” he said. That’s a rational business point of view because they are safeguarding their profits in the short term, he added.

“The problem is when not only powerful politicians, but also majorities fall for their lies, simply because it is the most convenient way out of our climate dilemma here and now,” he said. After decades studying the climate crisis, Steurer is convinced that the “toxic cocktail of profits and convenience through denial threatens our civilization as we know it, most likely sooner than we are able to imagine.”

Esther Bollendorff, the senior gas policy coordinator with Climate Action Network Europe, a large umbrella group of advocacy groups and other NGOs, said Wright’s European tour is “nothing more than a lobbying crusade” to try and lock Europe into fracked liquid fossil gas, a methane-intensive fuel widely banned across Europe. 

Bollendorf said European Union officials expect Wright to pressure Europe to weaken core environmental laws, including some related to methane emissions. 

“His visit is part of a broader U.S. effort to dismantle Europe’s Green Deal and roll back progressive climate and energy legislation,” she said. “After yet another summer of devastating climate disasters, the EU must hold the line and protect hard-won policies that cut fossil fuels.”

Reports and research from climate and energy watchdog groups and scientists indicate that while European countries have made some progress on decarbonization, they are just as stuck in a fading fossil energy paradigm as the United States.

A recent ruling by the International Court of Justice affirmed that policies promoting fossil fuel developments are out of step with international environmental legal obligations to avoid significant cross-border harms. 

Any new additional development of fossil fuels will also make it nearly impossible to reach the Paris Agreement climate goals, according to the most recent emissions gap report from the United Nations Environmental Programme.

And with emissions still increasing, the global average temperature is expected to rise another 3 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit above the pre-industrial level by 2100, an increase that will make deadly heatwaves, floods and wildfires more frequent and intense.