New York, Europe Brief News – Spending money on new coal, oil and gas as a result of the war in Ukraine is “delusional”, UN chief warns.
In remarks delivered via video to the Austrian World Summit in Vienna, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres described renewables as “the peace plan of the 21st century.”
Many countries want to increase their own fossil fuel production in order to depend less on Russian supplies.
Guterres says that our global energy mix is broken, and more coal will only reinforce the “scourge of war, pollution and climate catastrophe.”
The UN chief says that renewable energy is the peace plan of the 21st century.
“The energy crisis exacerbated by the war in Ukraine has seen a perilous doubling down on fossil fuels by the major economies,” he said on Tuesday.
“The war has reinforced an abject lesson: our energy mix is broken,” Guterres said. “Had we invested massively in renewable energy in the past, we should not be so dramatically at the mercy of the instability of fossil fuel markets now.”
Concerns related to both the energy transition and energy security have been thrown into sharp relief by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with the price of both oil and gas continuing to surge in recent months.
Russia is a significant supplier of both, and a number of major economies have formulated plans to reduce their reliance on its hydrocarbons in recent months. This desire to move away from Russian imports has led to some challenging situations.
