Europe must resist industry efforts to cash in on the energy crisis, warns Al Gore – newsdubai

European governments must push back against fossil fuel efforts to exploit the energy crisis by locking consumers into long-term dependence on hydrocarbons, former US Vice President Al Gore has said.

Countries are rushing to balance their green ambitions with the need to ensure energy security. At least 50 billion EUR 100 million in spending is planned by EU governments this winter on infrastructure and fossil fuel supplies after imports of oil, gas and coal from Russia plunged under sanctions and restrictions imposed after the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We must resist the efforts of gas and oil and coal sellers to lock in long-term increased dependence on fossil fuels, which is accompanied by long-term increases in greenhouse gas emissions,” Gore told the Financial Times.

Gore, who co-founded sustainable investment fund manager Generation Investment Management in 2004 with financier David Blood, said fossil fuel providers “will be looking to secure as long a period for the contract as possible” in supply agreement negotiations.

“Nations planning their strategies must be vigilant in all these negotiations, whether with private companies or sovereigns,” he added.

As winter approaches, the EU and member states aim to protect consumers from higher energy prices while diversifying away from Russian fossil fuel imports. Some of the proposed measures include a windfall tax on non-gas energy producers and a separate tax on large oil and gas companies.

Gore said that most countries appear to be striking a “successful balance” but warned that governments must “take great care” to ensure that they limit their fossil fuel-related spending “to programs that will help the short-term supply button. [but] will not lock us into decades of higher greenhouse gas emissions in the future”.

EU countries are increasing imports of liquefied natural gas from countries including the US and Algeria, with plans for as many as 19 liquefied storage and regasification unit projects at an estimated cost of €9.5 billion.

The war in Ukraine had highlighted the urgent threat that fossil fuel dependence poses to global security and democracy, Gore said, arguing that such dependence exacerbated the geopolitical “instability that Russia is trying to exacerbate and the blackmail that they are trying to maintain”. .

Gore accused fossil fuels of using “legacy networks of influence” to lobby for positive policy treatment, claiming that “they are mimicking the tobacco industry’s strategy of many decades ago – to broadcast false information on an industrial scale”.

Although renewable energy makes up about half of the US electricity generation mix compared to the EU, Gore is confident that the US will build momentum behind emissions reduction after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. He called the legislation, which includes significant measures to support green energy and infrastructure, “a historic event.”

Gore also waded into the debate surrounding the backlash to environmental, social and government investment in the United States. Nineteen attorney generals, all Republicans, sent a letter to BlackRock last month accusing the world’s largest money manager of prioritizing “activism” over fiduciary duty to its state pension funds.

Gore said asset managers had a fiduciary duty to their clients “to maximize returns using all the relevant factors that should be taken into account”, including non-financial considerations such as climate risk.

“I think it is unlikely that the courts will allow politically motivated officials to order asset managers to ignore clearly relevant factors,” he added.

Gore spoke as Generation Investment Management released its annual report on sustainability trends. It found that global carbon emissions from power generation could start to fall within a few years as renewable sources such as wind, solar and hydro power become a bigger part of the energy mix.

He said the shift to low-emission vehicles had reached a tipping point, with electric and hybrid cars now accounting for nearly 10 percent of the industry’s global sales.

But he warned that some stubborn problems – such as low levels of investment in clean energy, particularly in developing countries, and shortages of minerals such as lithium – needed to be addressed to accelerate the low-carbon energy transition.

“We need to move quickly despite the geopolitical situation we face – indeed because of it,” he added.