Oil producer group OPEC on Thursday sharply criticized the IEA’s forecast that demand for fossil fuels like coal, oil and gasoline will peak earlier than the tip of the last decade, describing such a story as “extraordinarily dangerous,” “impractical” and “ideologically pushed.”

The IEA, the world’s main vitality watchdog, stated Tuesday that the world was now on the “starting of the tip” of the fossil gas period.

In an op-ed revealed within the Monetary Occasions, IEA Government Director Fatih Birol stated for the primary time that demand for coal, oil and gasoline would all peak earlier than 2030, with fossil gas consumption then predicted to fall as local weather insurance policies take impact. His evaluation is predicated off of the IEA’s World Vitality Outlook, an influential report which is due out in October.

Birol hailed the forecast as a “historic turning level” however made clear that the projected declines can be “nowhere close to sufficient” to place the world on a path to limiting world warming to 1.5 levels Celsius above pre-industrial ranges.

This temperature threshold is broadly considered vital to keep away from the worst impacts of the local weather disaster. The burning of fossil fuels is the chief driver of the local weather emergency.

OPEC, a multinational group of primarily Center Jap and African nations, revealed a press release Thursday to stipulate its objections to the IEA chief’s forecast.

“Such narratives solely set the worldwide vitality system as much as fail spectacularly. It might result in vitality chaos on a probably unprecedented scale, with dire penalties for economies and billions of individuals the world over,” OPEC Secretary Common Haitham al-Ghais stated.

OPEC stated that earlier predictions of peak fossil gas demand had did not materialize. Nonetheless, it added that the distinction with these forecasts right now, “and what makes such predictions so harmful” was that they have been usually accompanied by calls to cease investing in new oil and gasoline tasks.

The group of oil-exporting international locations has beforehand urged the IEA to be “very cautious” about undermining trade investments.

The IEA’s Birol has stated that he acknowledged some funding in oil and gasoline can be wanted to account for declines at current fields, however warned of the foremost local weather and monetary dangers related to new massive scale fossil gas tasks.

“Cognizant of the problem going through the world to eradicate vitality poverty, meet rising vitality demand, and guarantee inexpensive vitality whereas decreasing emissions, OPEC doesn’t dismiss any vitality sources or applied sciences, and believes that each one stakeholders ought to do the identical and acknowledge short- and long-term vitality realities,” OPEC’s al-Ghais stated.

The connection between OPEC and the IEA has been more and more fraught lately, with Birol criticizing the tempo at which the producers’ alliance elevated its output charges, because it unwound the drastic manufacturing cuts it carried out within the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

OPEC and the IEA have additionally diverged of their strategy to world decarbonization. The IEA has repeatedly stated the pathway to net-zero emissions requires large declines in the usage of oil, gasoline and coal and warned in a landmark report in 2021 that there isn’t a place for brand new fossil gas tasks if the world is to stave off the worst of what the local weather disaster has in retailer.

The message from the world’s main local weather scientists in April final yr was {that a} substantial discount in fossil gas use shall be essential to curb world heating.

Certainly, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change stated that present fossil gas use was already greater than the planet might deal with and extra tasks have been destined to lock in even better emissions with devastating penalties.

— CNBC’s Ruxandra Iordache contributed to this report.