Rushing Clean Energy Could Stifle Everyone

Rushing Clean Energy Could Stifle Everyone

In December 2021, the Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman al-Saud warned that the world is heading towards an energy crisis if investments in the oil sector continue to decrease.

Prince Abdulaziz touted investment as the only way to preserve energy supplies and meet market needs.

Last week, the price of an oil barrel shot up to $140 per barrel. The price hike can be traced back to an increase in demand and a drop in supplies as well as political events the world is experiencing today, the most important of which is the Russian-Ukrainian war and the Iranian nuclear talks.

Prince Abdulaziz’s warning came in response to an international drive towards reducing investment in fossil fuels, gas and oil, which led to a decrease in direct and indirect investments in the energy sector, estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars from 2014 until 2021.

Companies Roll back Investments

A report issued by CleanTechnica – a US-based website specializing in clean energy - indicated that multinational companies’ volume of investments taken out of fossil fuels in 2014 amounted to about $52 billion. In 2018, it amounted to more than $125 billion.

In 2019, 1110 institutions with assets of more than 11 trillion dollars committed to