Republican lawmakers say green transition ‘cheerleader’ IEA has strayed from mandate
A pump jack operates in front of a drilling rig at sunset in an oil field in Midland, Texas U.S. August 22, 2018.
Nick Oxford | Reuters
Senior U.S. lawmakers believe the International Energy Agency has “strayed from its core mission” of safeguarding energy security and has emerged as a “cheerleader” for the green transition.
“We would argue that in recent years the IEA has been undermining energy security by discouraging sufficient investment in energy supplies — specifically, oil, natural gas, and coal. Moreover, its energy modeling no longer provides policymakers with balanced assessments of energy and climate proposals. Instead, it has become and ‘energy transition’ cheerleader,” said a letter dated March 20, penned by Republican Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming — ranking member on the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources — and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., chair of the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
“IEA forecasts have a tremendous influence on shaping how the world sees future energy trends. Consequently, the IEA must conduct its energy security mission in an objective manner. We believe the IEA is failing to fulfil these responsibilities,” said the letter, which is addressed to IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. “It should disturb you that biased parties are exploiting the IEA’s forecasts and other products to advocate for policies that undermine energy security.”
The IEA has taken a vanguard role in advocating for global decarbonization, and in a landmark 2021 analysis called for no new oil, gas, or coal development, if the world intends to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
Among other items, the letter signatories accused that the IEA’s 2021 report is “long on aspiration but short on the things that matter most to policymakers: objective analysis of energy flows, trade patterns, security impacts, and economic effects.”
They further inquired into the IEA’s forecast and modeling methodology, as well as into the extent of funding that the agency has received from the U.S. The IEA does not outright disclose its donors, stating that its budget and the scope of its work are determined every two years by its governing board and comprise voluntary contributions from countries, energy stakeholders and private sources.
The IEA on Thursday confirmed receipt of the letter to CNBC and stressed that its mandate remains maintaining energy security and accelerating clean energy transitions.
“In this context, we welcome feedback on our work and attach great importance to our dialogue with the U.S. Congress, where we regularly participate in hearings to provide expert testimony across a wide range of energy policy issues,” it said in a statement.
“As part of the IEA’s long-term energy system modelling, we produce a number of scenarios that are built on different underlying assumptions about how the energy system might evolve over time. As we highlight in our work, the different scenarios aim to help inform decision making by showing the effects of different policy, technology and investment choices. The scenarios are not predictions of exactly what will happen.”
The IEA’s peak demand projections, in particular, have repeatedly come under open fire from heavyweight oil producer Saudi Arabia and members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. OPEC itself is no stranger to U.S. pressure, with the oil alliance’s de-facto leader Saudi Arabia and the White House engaging in a brief but diplomatically visceral war of words in late 2022 over crude production cuts. OPEC has also been targeted by Congress’ long-protracted and yet-to-be-enacted No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartel (NOPEC) bill.
The lawmakers’ letter comes seven months ahead of presidential polls in the United States, where oil production has been breaking records and historically loomed as a sticking point with the domestic electorate. Incumbent U.S. leader Joe Biden has championed decarbonization, while frontrunner Donald Trump has stood by further drilling. U.S. energy major Exxon Mobil, which is battling activist investors on climate policies, has meanwhile extolled the merits of focusing on dialing down emissions, rather than extirpating the use of hydrocarbons.
The U.S. was a founding member of the IEA in the 1970s, joining a mission of responding to global oil shocks after the crisis of 1973 — when the Organization of the Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) declared an oil embargo against countries that supported Israel. As part of their membership commitments, IEA countries must ensure they retain oil stock levels equivalent to at least 90 days of their net imports, with which they can respond in the event of global supply disruptions.
Two years ago, IEA countries agreed their largest and fifth-ever oil stock release in response to Russia’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine.
EV sales kept up their momentum in December 2024, with incentives playing a big role, according to the latest Cox Automotive’s Kelley Blue Book report.
December’s strong EV sales saw an average transaction price (ATP) of $55,544, which helped push the industry-wide ATP higher, according to Kelley Blue Book. The December ATP for an EV was higher year-over-year by 0.8%, slightly below the industry average, and higher month-over-month by 1.1%. Tesla ATPs were higher year-over-year by 10.5%.
Incentives for EVs remained elevated in December, although they were slightly lower month-over-month at 14.3% of ATP, down from 14.7% in November.
EV incentives were higher by an impressive 41% year-over-year and have been above 12% of ATP for six consecutive months. Strong sales incentives, which averaged more than $6,700 per sale in 2024, were one reason EV sales surpassed 1.3 million units last year, according to Cox Automotive, a new record for volume and share.
(My colleague Jameson Dow reported yesterday, “In 2024, the world sold 3.5 million more EVs than it did in the previous year … This increase is larger than the 3.2 million increase in EV sales from the previous year – meaning that EV sales aren’t just up, but that the rate of growth is itself increasing.”)
Kelley Blue Book estimated that in December, approximately 84,000 vehicles – or 5.6% of total sales – transacted at prices higher than $80,000 – the highest volume ever. KBB lumps gas cars and EVs together into this luxury vehicle category, so this is where Tesla Cybertruck is slotted.
However, Tesla bundles sales figures of Cybertruck with Model S, Model X, and Tesla Semi(!) into a category it calls “other models,” so we don’t know for sure exactly how many Cybertrucks Tesla sold in Q4, much less in December. However, Electrek‘s Fred Lambert estimates between 9,000 and 12,000 Cybertrucks were sold in Q4, and that’s not a stellar sales figure.
What will January bring when it comes to EV ATPs? What about tax credits? Check back in a month and I’ll fill you in.
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Tesla is now claiming that Cybertruck was the ‘best-selling electric pickup in US’ last year despite not even reporting the number of deliveries.
There’s a lot of context needed here.
As we often highlighted, Tesla is sadly one of, if not the most, opaque automakers regarding sales reports.
Tesla doesn’t break down sales per model or even region.
For comparison, here’s Ford’s Q4 2024 sales report compared to Tesla’s:
You could argue that Tesla has fewer models than Ford, and that’s true, but Tesla’s report literally has two lines despite having six different models.
There’s no reason not to offer a complete breakdown like all other automakers other than trying to make it hard to verify the health of each vehicle program.
This has been the case with the Cybertruck. Tesla is bundling its Cybertruck deliveries with Model S, Model X, and Tesla Semi deliveries.
Despite this lack of disclosure, Tesla has been able to claim that the Cybertruck has become “the best-selling electric pickup truck” in the US in 2024:
It very well might be true. Ford disclosed 33,510 F-150 Lightning truck deliveries in the US in 2024 while most estimates are putting Cybertruck deliveries at around 40,000 units.
Those are global deliveries, but Tesla only delivered the Cybertruck in the US, Canada, and Mexico in 2024, and most of the deliveries are believed to be in the US.
However, there’s essential context needed here, as we highlighted in our recent ‘Tesla Cybertruck sales are disastrous‘ article.
First off, Tesla had a backlog of over 1 million reservations for the Cybertruck that it has been building since 2019. This led many to believe Tesla already had years of demand baked in for the truck and that production would be the constraint.
However, based on estimates, again, because Tesla refuses to disclose the data, Cybertruck deliveries were either flat or down in Q4 versus Q3 despite Tesla introducing cheaper versions of the vehicle and ramping up production.
Again, that’s after just about 40,000 deliveries.
Furthermore, with almost 11,000 deliveries in Q4 in the US, Ford more likely than not outsold Cybertruck with the F-150 Lightning in Q4.
Electrek’s Take
Tesla is in damage control here. There’s no doubt that it is having issues selling the Cybertruck.
Inventory is full of Cybertrucks and Tesla is now discounting them and offering free lifetime Supercharging.
Tesla is great at ramping up production, and it’s clear the Cybertruck is not production-constrained anymore. It is demand-constrained despite having over 1 million reservations.
Again, those reservations were made before Tesla unveiled the production version, which happened to have less range and cost significantly more.
The upcoming cheaper single motor version should help with demand, but I have serious doubts Tesla can ramp this program up to more than 100,000 units in the US.
As a reminder, Tesla installed a production capacity of 250,000 units annually and Musk said he could see Tesla selling 500,000 Cybertrucks per year.
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