AFP: "IEA Chief Birol: An 'Unexpected Hero' Of Climate Fight"
By Catherine Hours
The IEA caused a stir in 2021 when it published a roadmap to reach the Paris Agreement goal of having a carbon neutral world by 2050 and limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The message from the organisation that once worked to secure crude supplies was blunt: all future fossil fuel projects must be scrapped.
The report has opened the window of "what is deemed possible" in the rapid deployment of low-emissions energy, said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School.
Birol featured on Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world that same year.
Some climate campaigners have described him as an "unexpected hero" in the movement against global warming.
Quoted in: "IEA Chief Birol: An 'Unexpected Hero' Of Climate Fight" by Catherine Hours, Agence France-Presse (AFP), 18 September 2023; published e.g. by Barron's.
