Sydney Energy Forum: Energy crisis to worsen before it gets better, warns global power boss Fatih Birol

The head of the International Energy Agency has warned the global energy crisis will worsen as the Northern Hemisphere enters winter later this year.

Speaking at the Sydney Energy Forum on Tuesday, IEA executive director Fatih Birol said the energy crisis in Europe was about to get “very, very difficult”.

“The world has never witnessed such a major energy crisis in terms of its depth and its complexity,” he told delegates at the forum.

“It is interwoven by many factors including geopolitics and I believe we may not have seen the worst of it yet.

“This is a major concern and it has serious implications for the global economy.”

Dr Birol also warned global supply chains needed to be diversified in renewables, particularly to reduce the dominance of China in several parts of the manufacturing process for solar panels.

His comments come as Australia joined an international alliance of Western nation seeking to secure supply chains of critical minerals essential to the green energy revolution and decarbonisation of the globe.

WA mining billionaire and Fortescue Metals Group chairman Andrew Forrest said he was working to pivot his business to green energy wherever possible because it made good business sense.

“The reason I’m not investing in oil, coal or gas is not because I’m an overnight greenie,” Mr Forrest said.

“It is because as a business person, I want to protect my balance sheet.”

US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said the high cost of traditional fuels – including $US5 a gallon ($1.96 per litre) for petrol in the US – underlined the need to move faster to renewable energy.

“We see with fossil fuels how volatile it is and there’s only one direction for the price of clean energy and it continues irreversibly to move cheaper,” she said.

Ms Granholm said no country had ever been held hostage for access to the sun or wind, noting a move to clean energy globally could be the greatest peace plan of all.

“We want to make sure we are not as a nation under the thumb of petro-dictators and under the thumb of those who don’t share our values and under the thumb of those who would like to control aspects of the supply chain,” she said.