IEA scenarios downplayed renewables for political reasons - experts

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has grossly underestimated the growth of renewables in its influential World Energy Outlook (WEO) forecasts for political reasons in the past, green energy proponents have told the Deutsche Welle. “Fossil and nuclear industries are interested in artificially pushing up the estimates of renewables’ costs in order to influence policy in their favour,” Claudia Kemfert, head of the Department of Energy, Transportation and Environment at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), told the author, Gero Rueter. IPCC advisor Sven Teske, director at the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney, said he had learned unofficially that the IEA was told how much nuclear energy should be included in the WEOs. The IEA told Deutsche Welle that the calculations contained in the WEO reports were scenarios, not forecasts.

Read the article in German here.

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