Biden calls clean energy a matter of national security

US president is eager to persuade domestic oil industry to ramp up production as he prepares to visit Saudi Arabia

US President Joe Biden chastised the oil industry last week over soaring fuel prices at the heart of 40-year high inflation, warning of unspecified emergency measures. AFP

US President Joe Biden told a climate conference for major economies that Russia's war in Ukraine shows the shift to renewable energy is a matter of national security, as well as key to preventing global warming.

“Russia's brutal and unprovoked assault on its neighbour Ukraine has fuelled a global energy crisis and sharpened the need to achieve long-term reliable energy security and security,” Mr Biden told the virtual summit hosted from the White House.

“The good news is that climate security and energy security go hand in hand.”

This was Mr Biden's third convening of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate since he took office in 2021 with a vow to make the US a leader in the world's attempt to halt catastrophic global warming.

But it comes just as Mr Biden faces public anger over soaring fuel prices linked to fallout from Russia's invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, European countries are struggling to find ways to circumvent dependence on Russian oil and gas imports.

In his speech, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres delivered a blistering attack on the oil and gas industry, accusing it of mirroring tobacco companies' tactics to push a “false narrative to minimise their responsibility for climate change”.

“Nothing could be more clear or present than the danger of fossil fuel expansion. Even in the short term, fossil fuels don't make political or economic sense. Yet we seem trapped in a world where fossil fuel producers and financiers have humanity by the throat,” he said.

However, the UN chief's message ran counter to the political realities facing Mr Biden as he tries to persuade the domestic oil industry to raise production and prepares for a visit to Saudi Arabia next month.

Americans are currently paying an average of $5 a gallon to fill their cars, up from $3 a year ago, and the increase is in turn fuelling wider inflation, now at a 40-year high.

A senior Biden administration official said 23 countries were represented at the video conference, representing most of the world's major economies and “focused around the mitigation that they will be taking” on climate impacts.

At a previous session in September 2021, Mr Biden and the EU announced a pledge to cut emissions of methane, a planet-warming gas. This was formally launched at the COP26 UN climate summit in Glasgow and now has 115 country signatories.

Friday's gathering was the largest leader-level gathering before COP27, the follow-up summit, set to take place in Egypt this November.

But Russia did not attend Friday's summit, highlighting diplomatic complications besetting the search for international co-operation on the global climate threat.

China was represented only at the level of its climate envoy, rather than President Xi Jinping, the White House said. And India was not on the official list of attendees, either.

Warning that the world must not let global climate change mitigation goals “slip out of our reach”, Mr Biden said “the window for action is rapidly narrowing”.

Despite the scramble to adapt global energy markets to fallout from the Ukraine war, Mr Biden insisted that long-term climate management, immediate economic goals and ending reliance on energy exporter Russia can all work together.

He cited the global pledge to end methane gas leaks and the practice of burning off, or flaring, unwanted gas at oilfields, calling on countries to “ramp up” their responses.

European economies are heavily reliant on Russian energy, but Mr Biden said an end to methane waste alone could solve that problem.

“Each year our existing energy system leaks enough methane to meet the needs for the entire European power sector. We flare enough gas to offset nearly all of the EU's gas imports from Russia,” he said.

“So by stopping the leaking and flaring of this super-potent greenhouse gas and capturing this resource for countries that need it we're addressing two problems at once.”